


Normal [Monsters]

by syrensoul_red



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Explosions, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff and Smut, Mildly Dubious Consent, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Slow Burn, Swan-Mills Family, Sweet/Hot, anti-CaptainSwan, anti-OutlawQueen, magical poofing for sex purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 05:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3798292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrensoul_red/pseuds/syrensoul_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Swan Queen-focused re-imagining of the <b>4x07 - 4x09</b> arc because, as much as I loved Gay Elsa, bringing Emma back to herself and in control of her magic should have been done by Regina. </p><p>On top of all the Swan Queen, plenty of Swan-Mills Family feels abound.</p><p>  <i> "Regina clenched her jaw, tried to look more annoyed than the fear she felt. Eventually all she could do was slowly reach out and press her palm to Emma’s. It felt like fire, hot but not painful, like closing a circuit; the flow of nervous electricity. And then Emma braided her long fingers with Regina’s and in the tapestry of their knuckles, everything else disappeared."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately there's a **very brief** interaction with Regina and Turgid Hoodfink in this first part, nothing heavy, just what was on screen re-written to get rid of the Pinecone for good, because I freaking Hate that guy. #beardwarning. 
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I don't own Regina or Emma or any of the OUAT characters. This makes me very, very sad.
> 
> ~ Always open to concrit and very grateful for feedback. ~

**NORMAL [Monsters]**

****by

Syrensoul_Red

*****

 

**_1\. [ Once again, I collapse ]_ **

The glancing blow of a dying star; uncontrolled magic crackled and tore through Emma’s palms. She shook one hand until the bones of her wrist ached but she could not drive it out. The weathered plastic of the steering wheel cracked beneath her grip and she felt the nip of metal.

Emma had just… _left_ them there. Her father nearly crushed by a pole, Mary Margaret terrified and confused - her _mother_ , horrified at what she’d done, by what Emma _was,_ angry… Henry.

_Oh god Henry…_

A keening moan tore through Emma’s throat, frustration and pain; anger burned across a cold sheet of fear.

_What did that Dairy Bitch do to me? Why didn’t Hook-- why didn’t everyone just stop when I told them to? Left me alone…_

The squeal of rubber jolted Emma and she tried to ease back on the accelerator, not to ram it through the bug’s rickety floor but her thigh cramped under the force of restraint. She’d been driving for hours, she had no idea where she was -- she was out of control.

And then so was the bug.

It wasn’t built for Storybrooke’s winding forest backroads - tyres lost traction on the wet asphalt and Emma strained to keep the metal coffin steady. She made a white-knuckled correction into the skid and around they spun, large trees too close to the driver’s side window, passenger side, driver’s side again and then it lurched suddenly off the road and shuddered to a halt, violently, in leaf litter and gravel.

Emma breathed fiercely into the pounding silence, eyes panicked, heart percussive in her chest – and then she noticed the glow. It radiated through her clenched fists, flared and sparked brighter and brighter until it burnt her retinas and she had to look away. It was lightning and thunder and it broke from the storm of her, shot through the metal carcass of the bug and into the trees, tore them apart and set the forest on fire.

It took Emma a second to register what it - what _she -_ had done, and then she forced the door open and threw herself from the bug.

“Shit! Shit, shit, SHIT!” Emma scrambled for the rear door and her hands buzzed and shocked against the metal. She wrenched it open and then she was running towards the flames, fire extinguisher clutched tightly.

It had rained that day and the cold fog limited the fire’s hold, but still the canister was nearly empty by the time Emma felt it was safe to stop. And then, overstimulated and exhausted, surrounded by the charred remains of a decent wedge of forest – it all became too much.

Emma slid to the wet ground, back against the bogged tyre of her yellow car and started to cry. Not small or gentle tears – ugly sobbing, the kind you can do only in a remote part of a darkened forest. The kind of crying that shreds pieces of your lungs and drags them into your mouth. Emma held her head in her hands to stop her skull from breaking apart, tasted blood and bile and spat it into the space between her bent knees. She moaned like a dying creature no longer fit for the human world.

And when it was done, she laid on her side in the leaf litter, wet and shivering, for very a long time.

Until quietly, she rasped: “Well, fuck.”

*****

****

**_2\. [ My body is not my own ]_ **

Regina was not comfortable on the stone pallet but this part of her vault held no better options. She felt wild enough to ignore it: Robin’s insistent body pressed over her, rough lips scraped her neck, her shoulder, the sharp graze of stubble on her ribs - it irritated her skin in a not-unpleasant way.

Large hands sloughed her restraint until it cracked and crumbled; Regina heard herself moan with a strange bass and chuckled at it - and Robin stilled. She waited, raised herself and shot him a questioning look. His jaw was tight, so Regina reassured him with gentle eyes and a smile, though the smallest flick of irritation tightened her mouth.

Robin didn’t seem to notice that part. He kissed her stomach and it passed.

His torso was heavy on her, fingers pressed above her hipbones and when she tried to arch he wouldn’t let her. Regina enjoyed the struggle for a brief moment; that started to fade, then -- A chirping sound. Like a godsforsaken cricket.

Regina’s knee-jerk reaction was just that – she concertinaed suddenly and her leg connected squarely with Robin’s solar plexus. He grunted, reached out to steady himself but the stone pallet was only so wide, and then - Robin Hood was no longer on top of her. Indeed, he was nowhere to be seen.

Alarmed, Regina rolled onto her side and hung over the edge of the pallet to check, but he seemed uninjured. Unimpressed with gravity maybe, but fine. So she began to laugh. Wild laughter, a kind she was not accustomed to anymore, mildly hysterical and filled with a strange freedom. It was exhilarating. She exhaled into the space between them.

The chirping came again and Regina swung herself further over the pallet until she could reach her bag and the phone inside. “It might be Henry,” she murmured by way of apology.

Robin nodded, curtly smiled but his face was shaded. Regina squeezed his bicep before she righted herself. She could deal with it later.

The screen read Mary Margaret and panic rose in Regina’s throat. “What’s wrong?” she answered hoarsely. “Is it Henry?”

“Henry’s fine,” Mary Margaret replied, but Regina could sense that wasn’t all and it wasn’t good. Without thinking, she reached behind her for the ball of her dress and started to pull it on. “It’s Emma,” Mary Margaret continued. “She’s-- Something happened, at the jail. There was an... accident.”

Regina frowned, switched ears and wedged the phone into her shoulder. “What kind of accident?” She wriggled the red fabric up over her bra. “Is everyone ok? Emma—“

“David’s a little bruised but he’ll be ok. Emma--  It all happened so fast, Regina. There was magic, _her_ magic, and-- Emma was out of control and then…” Mary Margaret trailed off into a weak sob and Regina pushed herself off the pallet and immediately gathered her heels from the stone floor.

“What do you mean ‘out of control’? Mary Margaret, _where is Emma_?”

“I don’t know,” she said shakily, her voice small. “She jumped into her car and drove away. We didn’t _mean_ \-- They tried looking for her in town, but… Hook, Elsa and David have gone into the forest but it’s too big to search by ourselves. We need a group or a spell or something, it’s just—I think it might be dangerous—“

“You think Emma is dangerous?” Regina asked darkly, frozen briefly on the edge of the stairs as she tightened her heels at the ankle.

Mary Margaret pleaded, “I don’t think she means to be—“

“I’m coming,” Regina said sharply, and hung up. As she stood, she realised her dress was twisted, the fabric bunched at her hips and suddenly she was embarrassed. Regina tugged roughly at it, tried to force everything perfectly into place, she couldn’t let Emma see her like this--

Regina paused at that. Tilted her head. Narrowed her eyes. At the sound of a cleared throat, she startled and whipped around. She had almost forgotten Hood was there.

“Robin.” Regina smiled warmly and hoped it touched her eyes. He was half in the shadows, arms crossed over his bare chest. His jaw flexed rhythmically while his mouth was hard. “Robin, I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“Emma.” It was less a question from him, more a statement of fact.

“Something’s wrong. I have to help find her.” She crossed to him though she didn’t have time, wrapped her hands gently around his tense arms and squeezed the muscle reassuringly. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

His voice was cold and Regina’s face fell almost imperceptibly, a small lump of hurt worked its way into her throat. Something had changed, suddenly and drastically, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on what. _Regret? Second thoughts? We almost…_

“Maybe this is for the best,” Regina said quietly, and then she couldn’t meet his eyes. She let her hands slide from his arms. “I should go.”

As soon as she stepped back, the man roared suddenly to life. He grabbed her, not roughly but firmly, insistently and then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her with tongue and desperation, and for just a moment Regina let herself be taken in this strange way - but then it tasted too much of bitterness and she pushed him back.

“Robin—”

He was on her again, arms tighter this time, crushing her to him and for the first moment since their affair began, Regina didn’t feel any passion so much as his demand for something she wasn’t prepared to give.

Regina pulled herself free again, forcefully this time. Her hands were firm against his chest, arms outstretched, keeping him away. “Robin, I can’t.”

“Because of Emma?” he spat.

She levelled wounded eyes at him. “Because I have to help Mary Margaret _find_ Emma, yes.” Regina stepped back, left him to hold his own chest for a while. “She might be in trouble and if that’s the case - if it’s her magic - then so is Storybrooke. I have to think about Henry—”

“--And I, Roland,” Hood interjected, in such a way that it sliced through Regina. There was something pointed about the mention of his son, he almost wedged the boy between them.

Inside, Regina collapsed. Outside, she hardened. It was the only way she knew. “And Marian -- Or had you forgotten your wife? She’s just down the hall…” Regina’s voice nearly cracked on the last syllable but she hid it behind the flourished squeak of her heel as she spun away. “If you’ll excuse me,” she concluded regally, and strode out.

A moment later at the top of the stairs, Regina wiped at tears that burnt her eyes and she knew they wouldn’t stop falling for some time. But she never once broke her stride.

It was done. She left the vault.

She had to find Emma.

*****

****

**_3\. [ There has to be more to me than ashes ]_ **

After she’d eventually freed the bug, Emma drove into the night mindlessly - though carefully this time - until she’d reached a cliff that overlooked the town of Storybrooke. It was mercifully sparse on trees.

Lights spread malignantly through the valley, the cancerous remnants of a fairy tale curse. Emma found no comfort in them. She was tired, very tired, weighted down by a thick blanket of resignation.

Had the Dairy Bitch called her a monster? Or was it Mary Margaret who’d said that? Emma wasn’t sure – maybe nobody had, maybe just herself – but Mary Margaret’s eyes had implied it. The tone in her voice when she’d said “ _Emma”_ ; the kind of disappointment Emma had never expected to see from her, not from Snow freaking White. Not from her mom.

Emma was a _monster_.

Her hands started to glow and spark and she took a deep breath, held the magic in, exhaled in a billowed plume. It was freezing up here. Her teeth chattered and she sank lower into the collar of her jacket, wished she could wear gloves but her magic had already taken out one pair. It wasn’t worth the sacrifice of another.

There was a rug on the back seat and Emma tugged it over herself until just her face was exposed to the cold bite of air. She couldn’t keep thinking about this – about the Snow Queen and her parents, about baby Neal and being replaced and -- _Of course I’m not being replaced how could they they would never_ —

Emma smelled hot fabric, like an iron left too long on a shirt and wrestled her thoughts away from that can of emotional bullshit before she lost her blanket too. She needed something else, a distraction.

_Hook?_

_Nope, still mad at him._

Hook never listened, never left well enough alone… And it couldn’t be Henry because every time she thought of her son, of the possibility he could see her as a monster, Emma wanted to scream and rage and immolate until her mouth tasted of ashes.

_Regina…?_

_Where is Regina?_

The last time Emma had seen her, they had been stalking around that ice cream truck and she was still so mad…

Emma waited for the pop and burn of her magic but – Nothing. She was surprised. Maybe, maybe she was so used to Regina disliking her for _reasons_ , it just didn’t affect her anymore. But then clearly that wasn’t true because bringing Marian back, destroying Regina’s chance for a Happy Ending had sliced through Emma’s insides, left a sharp wound that stung every time she saw Regina or the hurt in her eyes. They had come so far and now…

But Emma’s hands remained reassuringly non-fatal. Warm though. Her whole body was warm. She had stopped shivering and she could feel her nose again. The air inside the bug was comfortable. Emma’s brow furrowed but she decided not to question it. Apparently as long as she kept thinking about Regina and blocked everyone else from her mind, she could maintain her equilibrium.

_Great._

Some small part of Emma was ok with that – very ok. A tiny part which, whether she was conscious of it or not, was always okay with thinking of Regina. Insistent even. Thinking about Regina was something it just always did. _Happily,_ it whispered; _warmly_. _Hotly_ \--

Emma bolted upright, her blanket fell as she hit the steering wheel hard enough that the car rocked. _The fuck?_

Emma looked around the cramped shell of the bug accusingly, like maybe some evil whoever had poofed in while she was distracted and put that _whatever_ into her mind. But it was just her. Alone. Of course.

_No one here but us monsters._

Could that be it? Was the monster in her drawn to Regina? But then, Regina hadn’t been evil in a long time. Regina had proven herself over and over, loving Henry, loving— _saving_ Emma - and Emma’s parents and the people of Storybrooke… Regina was proving it even now, working to save the wife of the man she loved despite herself.

Maybe Emma was just tired. She curled back into her seat and tucked herself up in the blanket and tried to not-think about anything at all. Not even Regina. _Especially not Regina._

Emma closed her eyes. Eventually she slept.

*****

****

**_4\. [ If I could return, it would be here ]_ **

When Regina pushed open the front door of the Mayoral mansion, she almost called out for Henry but of course he was not there. This wasn’t his home right now. It wasn’t hers either – recently Regina had been practically living in her vault. This house was too empty without Henry to be called a home, and too full of Snow White during business hours to be anything comfortable.

But she still kept clothes here, and enough ingredients and equipment to make a passable locator spell – and it wasn’t like she could go back to her vault now. Hood was there, and Marian, and enough raw-knuckled pain to bring her to her knees and she couldn’t afford that. Not now. She had Emma to think about. _Finding_ Emma.

But first, a quick shower. A change of clothes. _New skin…_ Regina stood under pounding wet heat and scrubbed at stubble rash longer than she’d meant to. Eventually she felt almost human. Empty, but manageable.

She dressed knowing she would eventually be up for a long hike -- Lower-heeled boots than she would usually want, zippered over thick leggings and a knee-length leather skirt. Regina buttoned a pinstripe wool vest over her satin blouse and for some reason wasted time on lipstick and mascara, though nothing else.

It was near-freezing outside and she knew she would need a coat, gloves – _Emma must be frostbitten._ Regina pulled out an extra coat and hung everything on the rack by the front door.

She tied her hair into a simple ponytail and made for the locked magic cabinet in the reading room. She made short work of the locator potion. There’d been a demand lately and she’d taken to pre-preparing ingredients. She distilled the blue-tinted liquid into two vials – one for the Charmings and the other she tucked into her coat pocket as she pulled it on.

Regina was in no mood to join the band of merry idiots, yet she wanted to do something. To stay busy. Traipsing through the forest to find Miss Swan seemed… strangely appealing, if not – invigorating?

Regina snorted at herself. She was losing her mind. She pulled on leather gloves, tucked the spare coat under her arm and pulled the heavy mansion door firmly as she left.

*

Regina didn’t want to see Snow, which was fine because she caught an exhausted Charming and the two superfluous characters before they made it home. Regina thrust the locator spell at him. “It might take a while until it’s active,” she hedged. “You should wait a few hours.”

It wouldn’t, but Regina needed a head-start. She didn’t ask herself why. When David questioned where she was going, Regina merely waved a gloved hand over her shoulder and continued walking. It was a ‘dismissing the men from my life’ kind of night.

She had something of Emma’s for the spell – a knitted beanie the woman had once pulled free of blonde curls and left on the hook at Regina’s front door. She had kept it all this time because… _magic reasons,_ she’d told herself. And now it was true. Regina pulled the hat from her coat pocket and did not feel at all the urge to breathe in its scent of shampoo and cinnamon. Not at all _._

Regina had parked her Mercedes on Main Street because she was not an idiot. There was no reason for her to fight her way through dirt and insects and foliage until it was absolutely necessary. She emptied the locator spell over the beanie and threw it into the chill air. It floated obediently into the gleam of her headlights.

Regina roared the Merc away from the curb.

*

Hours later, Regina stood in the middle of a blackened copse of trees - frustrated and perhaps, mildly, frantic.  

The locator spell seemed intent on taking her haphazardly through the forest, to places the Saviour clearly _had_ been but wasn’t anymore. It was like following a compass that couldn’t find True North. However much Emma was out of control of her magic, clearly the part of her that didn’t want to be found was working just fine.

Regina collected a hunk of charcoal from the ground and brought it to her nose. It smelled of chemicals – flame retardant, and something faintly bitter that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The bespelled beanie darted around beside her like a nervous puppy and she scruffed it forcefully.

“Try this, you useless thing,” she hissed, and smeared oily ash across its wool. It would probably never wash out and Emma would kill her - but suddenly the hat had renewed purpose and headed off along a wider road. Regina sighed and made her way back to her car. The sun would be up soon.

Perhaps she’d have better luck in the light.

*****

****

**_5\. [ I found a home in you, once ]_ **

Why was Henry here? How? How had he found her?

Emma tried to keep him distant: “I can't control my powers right now. Listen, don't worry about me. I'm gonna find a way to fix this, but until I do... You gotta go.”

But Henry kept walking towards her. “No. You always think that pulling away from people will fix your problems, but it never does. I can help you.”

“Henry, just wait.” Emma begged him to stay back with outstretched, crackling hands. But her kid was stubborn, and sweet, and he reached out and touched her-- And the air exploded between them. “Henry!” Emma started to run towards him. “Henry are you ok?!”

His crumpled body on the wet ground, her son groaned in pain – Emma stopped herself short, fists pressed to her chest like sheathed weapons but she was not disarmed, Emma knew that. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm... I'm fine.” He lied. The fingers he held up showed the back of his head was bloodied.

Tortured panic ripped through Emma’s chest, more pain than she had ever known. “Is that a cut? Henry, what did I do?”

Her son stood, placated her; reassured her, “I'm okay.”

Emma’s wide-eyed vision had narrowed only to the sight of his blood. A wild monster clawed inside her chest, roared _Run!_ \-- “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Mom…”

“Stop! Please, don't come any closer.” Emma felt the magic rise again. It burnt at her sides, tore at her skin. “I love you kid, but you gotta go. Just go!”

Another wave of power ignited the air between them. It forced Henry back. Emma looked down at her hands and knew, knew there wasn’t just a monster somewhere inside of her. She _was_ the monster. Maybe she always had been.

Henry turned from her. He ran.

 _A monster. I’m a monster_ …

“I know exactly how you feel.”

Emma startled, stood bolt upright – the Dairy Witch. Finally, someone she could hurt without shame.

“…seeing the fear in his eyes...”

Emma spun and released a shockwave of magic at the icy bitch. It missed, though not by much. Yet the other woman merely turned her head and watched it go, nonplussed.

“You _are_ out of control,” she said, delighted. “But, Emma, you're not going to hurt me. Nor should you. I'm on your side.”

Emma heard a bellowed voice in the distance, “HENRY?” -- It was Regina. _How many people are out in these damned woods?_

“Just leave me the hell alone,” Emma warned the Snow Queen.

“ _EMMA_?”

Regina again, closer this time. The Ice Bitch didn’t react and Emma wondered if she was hallucinating.

“You can run, but it won't help,” the woman said calmly. “The only way this ends is you embracing who you are.”

“Just leave me—”

“Emma!”

Emma spun and there she was – Regina: a tornado, a fury, a seriously fucked off mother bear. “Did you hurt Henry?” she roared.

“The Snow Queen—” Emma turned but there was no one there.

“DID YOU HURT OUR SON?”

“Yes!” The word fled Emma’s throat, a strangled cry filled with saltwater and regret. “I didn’t mean—He was bleeding—”

Regina shoved her, hard. Emma stumbled backwards, tripped over a branch and sprawled to the ground.

“I will _kill_ you,” Regina growled and magic swelled in her palm, a roaring fireball of anger.

Emma rolled onto her side in the wet dirt. She sobbed, pleaded quietly, “Just do it.” This would be the end. Emma embraced it.

It never came.

Regina’s boots stopped short of her crumpled body and then her face appeared, still dangerous, still angry but also… softer somehow. Her eyes were wet, her face was… pared back. She looked younger.

“I’m not _actually_ going to kill you.” There was a hitch in Regina’s voice like she said it reluctantly, that she was annoyed she had to say it at all.

“But... Henry—”

Regina gritted her teeth, paused; exhaled slowly. “He looked well enough to run away from me a minute ago.” Her voice rasped with dismay -- she would talk to her son sternly about that later.

Emma’s hands still crackled magic and wood smoke stung her eyes but she wasn’t prepared to move, wasn’t even capable of it. “I’m not good like this. I’m a monster.”

Regina sighed, exasperated. “You’re being ridiculous.” She grabbed Emma’s wrist and pulled at her. “You need to get up. It’s cold.”

“I need to stay here where I can’t hurt anybody.”

“Clearly that’s not true, because Henry already found you - _I_ found you.” Regina wrangled Emma into sitting. “Do you really think your hero parents won’t be next?”

Emma was wide-eyed again, panicked. “You have to keep them away from me! I almost killed David once today, I can’t—”

“You will get control of yourself, Emma.” Regina pulled Emma to her feet while she was distracted and reasonably compliant. “There - look at you now…”

Emma stared for a moment, confused; followed Regina’s pointed gaze to their hands. She held Regina’s ungloved fingers tightly and no magic spat or bit between them. “How-- How did you do that? What did you do?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything.” Regina pulled her hand away.

Almost immediately, the buzz and arc returned. Emma stared at it, narrowed her eyes. “Hold my hand.”

“What? No.” Regina stepped uncomfortably back, struggled to put her glove back on as though it needed to be protected.

Emma pleaded with red-rimmed eyes, “Just hold it, ok?”

Regina glared, sighed - relented. She held out her hand for a polite handshake but Emma took it from the wrong direction, and then there they were, holding hands like lovesick teenagers in the middle of a sunlit forest. Regina had no idea what to do with herself.

It worked though. Emma stared at their clasped hands for a moment. She stepped into Regina and Regina pulled back without thinking – it was too much. But when Emma caught her eyes and searched them, green held Regina like a rough-worn sea.

“The other one,” Emma gravelled.

“What?”

“Your other hand,” Emma said, like she was slow. “Let me hold it.”

Regina didn’t move and exasperated, Emma reached for her. Almost immediately, Regina felt an unnatural burn and shot away. “That hurt,” she snapped accusingly.

“Your glove.” There was an hysteric edge to Emma’s voice. “I already ruined a pair of mine - take off your glove.”

Regina frowned, did not want any part in this, there was too much… _skin_ going on. Skin was trouble. Leather was better. Let something else’s skin face the world.

Yet Regina peeled the glove from her hand and slipped it and the other into her pocket.

Emma reached for her again, held one of Regina’s hands loosely and then the other – Emma hesitated. She held her hand up between them, palm to Regina and waited tentatively, unsure; terrified.

Regina clenched her jaw, tried to look more annoyed than the fear she felt. Eventually all she could do was slowly reach out and press her palm to Emma’s. It felt like fire, hot but not painful, like closing a circuit; the flow of nervous electricity. And then Emma braided her long fingers with Regina’s and in the tapestry of their knuckles, everything else disappeared.

“Hey look at that…” Emma’s voice was hushed wonder, eyes fixed on the point where their hands met.

Regina was drawn to something else -- The soft lines of Emma’s face, the relief, the sheer joy of what happened when they touched. She felt it too, but knew that her heart-pounding exhilaration came from another place entirely. It had nothing to do with magic - at least, not the kind that plagued Emma. When the blonde finally looked back at her, Regina dropped her eyes to the ground, bitten.

“So I guess that works,” Emma said with a rough humour.

“Yes, well - I can’t exactly hold your hands for the rest of my life,” Regina objected. _You could_ , a traitorous voice whispered. She cleared her throat against it. “We’re going to have to find you a more practical solution.”

Emma’s face shuttered again. “What if there isn’t one?”

“Of course there is. There’s always a solution to general magic, we just need to find it.”

Emma looked at her with fragile hope and Regina’s ribs caught on the inside of her skin. Emma smelled of pine and winter fireplaces,  like cinnamon and faintly androgynous cologne and Regina realised they had stepped into each other again, and the closeness constricted her throat at her collarbone, made it difficult to breathe...  “I like your shirt,” Regina blurted, to reinflate the space between them.

Emma was momentarily confused. She leant back, looked down at herself. “Uhhhhm, thanks? It comes in jackets too. The designer, I mean. Makes jackets.”

Regina nodded seriously as though it mattered. “I’ll look into that.” She used the distraction to drop Emma’s hands and step away.

Magic crackled again and Emma stared at her palms despondently. Quietly, she said, “I just wanted to be normal, you know? Have a family, a simple life. An apartment in New York or whatever. Normal things.”

“Miss Swan,” Regina began, and nearly stopped herself. But she felt it was necessary… “You could _never_ be normal. You are extraordinary.”

Distracted, Emma took the sentiment at its surface. She shook her head. “I’m a monster.”

Regina scoffed - a dismissive eye-roll, a hinted smirk. “Please, you are not even close. I know monsters. I was a monster. Even on the Evil Queen’s _cuddliest_ days, I was still ten times worse than you could ever be.”

A smiled played at the corner of Emma’s lips despite herself. “The Evil Queen had cuddly days?”

“Days where there was a lot less hanging,” Regina said dryly. “And a lot more gentle suffocation.”

Emma shook her head ruefully, dropped her gaze. “How do you do that? How do you just – laugh it off?”

“I don’t.” Regina drew herself back, a flash of annoyance. “I know what I’ve done. I’m not proud of it. But everything I did–” Regina considered it; took Emma’s hand again. “Every horrible, _monstrous_ thing I did, led me here. To Henry, to y-- to this place. And I’d never change that. What I have now - I regret _nothing_.”

“Henry’s worth it, I _get_ that, I do.” Emma’s fingers dug into Regina’s almost painfully. “But everything else…”

Regina returned the force on Emma’s palm until the blonde met her eyes again; Regina smiled, slowly and broadly and tried to convey the brightest parts of Henry when she said, “I may not be ‘normal’. But the love I have in my life – I know there is no way I could be a monster.”

Emma wanted so much to believe. The earnest glimmer in Regina’s eyes, how far she had come - but with everything that had happened to Emma recently, being a constant magnet for evil, the uncontrolled magic and a tendency to hurt the people she cared for - she just could not. Emma could not forget anything. “Maybe that’s true for you Regina. But maybe not for me.”

“Emma—”

“I can’t have a normal life. Not like this. There has to be another way.”

“Short of stripping you of all your magic – there’s not.” To Regina, it was a perverse joke, but it backfired. Emma was inordinately interested.

“Could that be done?”

“ _No,_ ” she snapped, as at a naughty child.

“You just said—”

“I was being facetious.”

“Regina—”

“ _Emma_ ,” Regina shot back, and her eyes flashed a warning. “I will say this _once_. You would need an incredibly strong practitioner of magic, someone who was willing to strip away every part of what makes you _you_. And as infuriating as I find you most of the time, you are also potentially talented, and a hero to our son. So, no – I will not do that. It would be monstrous. Do not ask me again.”

Emma’s tears had started in earnest and she felt like they would never stop. She shook from more than cold, from a pitted despair that bent her bones and crumpled her face and tore her throat open. “I hurt the people I love, Regina! What if I can’t get control? What if I _never_ do? _What If I hurt Henry again_?”

“I won’t let that happen,” the brunette snapped. “I’ll teach you to control your magic. We can do this together.”

“I don’t think I can!” It was sobbed, high-pitched and broken and Emma hardly recognised any part of herself anymore.

“Of _course_ you can,” Regina insisted, her voice rough and sore, and she stepped into Emma’s lean body, her hand and arm on Emma’s shoulder - closer than they had been before, yet still with space between them to breathe – _essential_ breathing room...

Ordinarily, that would have been enough. Too much, even. Emma wasn’t one to breach distance, rarely to touch - especially with Regina. She wasn’t fragile or needy or dependent on anyone, it just wasn’t the way their relationship worked… And yet, she collapsed.

Emma’s knees buckled and she grabbed hold of the only safe harbour in this torrential storm. Arms around Regina, one across her ribs and the other up over her shoulder, Emma clutched tighter until her hands met wedged under the jut of Regina’s shoulder blades. For a moment it was so wooden, so strange for both of them that it threatened to shatter into awkward excuses and muttered apologies and a great deal of fleeing. But then one of them took a deep breath and everything just sort of… settled into place.

Distantly, Emma felt ridiculous because Regina seemed somehow smaller than her, shorter than usual -- _Where are her heels?_ \-- but at the same time, this woman was powerful and fierce and Emma knew she would be held up no matter how heavily she leaned.

For a moment, she felt safe.

When Regina slipped her arms from their awkward angle on Emma’s upper back to a more comfortable position around her waist, Emma shifted to fit perfectly against her. Emma’s hand slid to the small of Regina’s back because it stopped her elbow from aching, but also the bow and arch of Regina’s body just happened to be the perfect shape for Emma to curl her fingers into.

Regina smelled like Dolce and Gabbana and leather, like dark chocolate and spiced apple turnovers and Emma –she didn’t mean to, didn’t even know she had at first, but she turned her face across the seam of the woollen coat and into its collar, until the frozen tip of her nose pressed against the sharp heat of Regina’s skin at the juncture of shoulder and neck.

It was nice, and there was something else there – salt and nutmeg and a scent she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something uniquely this woman and then Emma’s lips were pressed against the pulse point that throbbed with life, and a vibration, low and dark, ricocheted through Regina and drew Emma’s mouth to capture it, wetly…

“ _Emma_ …”

Suddenly, so that there could be no warning, magic reared and exploded through her.

Emma thought she’d screamed “Regina!” but she couldn’t be sure. She felt a crack at her ribs and then she flew, and she didn’t remember landing just sharp pain, and then darkness.

*****


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Henry’s face sprang into her mind; his trusting eyes, the smell of his hair as she held him, relieved he had made it out of Neverland alive; Emma crushed in with her, body warm and unabashedly against hers as they held their son… And Regina knew no matter what happened between her and Miss Swan; no matter how ill-equipped she was to play hero, she would risk her life a thousand times to rescue Henry’s mother."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the positive feedback, comments and kudos. It has been quite overwhelming and altogether lovely :)  
>   
> I had planned for this piece to be two chapters only, but I am leaving town in a few hours and the seriously sexy stuff needs a re-work, so I thought I'd put this part up now to tide you all over. I hope that's ok. The finale will be posted from the road as soon as I hit wi-fi.

**NORMAL [Monsters]**

****by

Syrensoul_Red

*****

 

**_6\. [ Without you, I ached ]_ **

Regina returned to consciousness disoriented and in pain. She had no idea how much time had passed. Emma and the bug were gone. She was fairly certain her knee needed strapping, so she hobbled slowly back to the Merc and tentatively drove herself into town.

It was a split-second decision that saw her standing at the Charmings’ door, despite Henry’s probable presence - one that Regina would later put down to concussion-induced madness. She steeled herself and barged inside the small loft apartment. “Where is he? Is Henry ok?”

Three sets of eyes stared at her in various shades of alarm. Mary Margaret was on her feet before Regina got more than a few steps in.

“Regina! What happened? You’re hurt!”

“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”

“It’s not - your knee looks awful.”

“Thank you, Mary Margaret,” Regina sneered. The woman ignored her, led her to a chair with an insistent hand.

David was far less inviting. “Where have you been all night? We tried calling you.”

“Well I’m sorry if I don’t respond to your every summons! That _hurts,_ ” she added pointedly, as Mary Margaret’s fingers dug at her skin. The woman looked momentarily apologetic, but continued wrangling Regina’s knee with a tight bandage.

“You should rest this,” Mary Margaret warned. “ _And_ tell us where you’ve been.”

Regina bit her tongue against an old habit of telling Snow White regally where she could shove her demands. Instead she looked to the ceiling for patience. “I went after Emma.”

“You _what_?” David reared up on his stool. “You said that locator spell needed time to activate!”

“I said that _hours_ ago.” She glared at him. “Why is it still here? Why are _you_?”

David folded his arms but looked mildly cowed, retook his seat.

“Regina…” Mary Margaret dragged burnt-wood eyes away from her husband. “Did Emma do this to you?”

“Not on purpose.” Regina was so unusually quick to defend Emma that Mary Margaret’s brow furrowed, so she pushed on to avoid follow-up questions. “I still haven’t heard why none of you are out looking for her.”

“She called,” Mary Margaret said quietly. “Emma called us.”

“ _What?_ When?”

Mary Margaret was thrown by Regina’s intensity. “A little while ago--”

“What did she say?”

“Regina, Emma is our daughter -- shouldn’t you be asking to see your son?”

Regina narrowed her eyes, snapped, “Of course I want to see Henry.” Nothing was more important to her than Henry – _nothing_. But Regina resented the implication that Emma’s safety was not her business. She gathered every last ounce of self-control. “Are you forgetting, Mary Margaret, that Henry is _our_ son? Mine _and_ Emma’s? Anything she does will affect him, and she’s not exactly thinking rationally right now. I need to know what she plans to do about her little _problem_.”

The pixie-haired woman seemed placated, returned immediately to her typical compassion. “Emma said she had a way to get rid of her magic. For good.”

“ _What_?” Horror mixed with Regina’s disbelief. “Did she say how?”

“No…”

“Mom?”

All eyes turned to the stairs - to Henry. Regina was immediately on her feet with her arms open.

“Henry!” Her son threw himself at her, and Regina stumbled back against the chair.

“Mom, you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Regina brushed it off and searched his body for wounds – Emma had said he was bleeding. She found the bruised mark below his ear and convoluted tears blurred her eyes.

Henry asked in a wary voice: “Did Ma do that to you?”

“No, I slipped in the woods. Does yours hurt?”

“Only a little,” he murmured, and Regina ruefully acknowledged they had both lied to protect Emma.

Regina healed him with a gentle glow of magic -- “All better,” then held him so tightly. A chair scraped as the Charmings and Elsa left them alone, for which Regina was grateful.

Henry released her eventually and helped her back into her seat. “Can you fix yours?”

“That’s a little harder,” Regina admitted. She waved a glowing hand across her knee and the ache eased but didn’t leave entirely. “Don’t you worry about me - that’s my job.” She smiled at him reassuringly and wrapped an arm around his waist when he perched on the side of her chair.

Henry was quiet, thoughtful and Regina waited for him.

“It must be nice to have magic,” he said, almost reluctantly. “And be useful.”

“Useful?” She shrugged. “It doesn’t always do what you want it to do.”

“No.” Henry stared at his anxious hands. “But I went out there to help her, and I couldn’t _do_ anything, because I’m just-- Ordinary.”

“Henry…” His pain hurt her, and Regina reached out and stilled his hands, held them tightly in her own. “We are each given our own gifts. You have the heart of the _truest_ Believer. You brought us all together. You don’t need magic to make you special - _you_ do that.” Regina’s quick smile slipped as she admitted, “Besides, I have magic and I couldn’t help Emma either.”

Henry was crestfallen. “So she did hurt you.”

“It was my fault,” Regina insisted.

“Were you two fighting again?”

Regina took an open-mouthed breath and held it, completely unprepared for how to answer. _Sometimes, Henry, when two mothers meet in the woods in a magically charged emotional situation, one of them will unexpectedly kiss the other and maybe the other mom will like it and then--_ “Not exactly...”

Henry’s brow furrowed. “Are you going to try to help her again?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Mom—” Henry hesitated the way he had always done when he was going to admit to a transgression. “I overheard grandma and grandpa talking about Ma, about what she was going to do…”

Regina chuckled in spite of herself. “Of course you did.”

He went on, increasingly perturbed. “She wants to get rid of her magic, for good - and _they want to let her._ Mom, you can’t let that happen! You _can’t._ Magic might not be everything, but it _is_ who _she_ is. It’s a part of Emma - she’s the Savior and you can’t let her take that away. You _can’t_! _”_

He threw himself into her chest and Regina wrapped her arms around his broadening shoulders while he cried like the child he almost wasn’t anymore. She rubbed his back and shushed him mindlessly as her own tears fell quietly onto his tartan shirt. _My poor boy, my poor sweet boy…_

Regina knew he was right. She didn’t think she was the right person for the job – Emma was the hero. But if the actual heroes, the Charmings, weren’t willing to stop their daughter from making the biggest mistake of her life, Regina would have to try her hand at the light side again.

It wasn’t like she had much faith in the Author’s plan anyway. Not now. No one was in charge of Regina’s fate but Regina. _What is a little neck nuzzling between once-sworn-enemies-turned-casual-friends?_ … So it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing in Storybrooke ever was.

Regina sat Henry up, wiped his tears and cupped his perfect chin. “Don’t you worry,” she whispered emphatically, and smiled. “I will take care of _everything_.”

“You know where she’d go?”

“I have a pretty good idea…”

Regina rested her forehead against her son’s, and relaxed into the warmth of his trust for just little while longer.

*****

****

**_7\. [ This could be my undoing ]_ **

Emma hadn’t stopped sparking magic since she’d lost her mind in the woods. Not just her hands anymore, it was her whole body.

She was sure Regina was fine. After she’d regained her senses, Emma had checked Regina carefully - banged and bruised but far too powerful to be down for long. Then she couldn’t risk hurting her again, so she’d fled.

_What the fuck was I thinking?_

Emma hadn’t been, clearly, not at all.

It wasn’t a side effect of magic – she couldn’t blow it off that easily. But Emma could put the moment down to stress and heightened emotion, and that strange thing she had for bad boys-- girls. Bad, _whatever_. It was all just bad. Something about danger and fighting, and a thousand unhealthy relationship triggers she had gained from years in the foster system.

It was also just… Regina.

That woman had known how to push her buttons since the night they’d met. Regina had obviously hated her, but for a split-second Emma felt she’d _wanted_ her more. And it had been completely mutual. If it hadn’t been for all the crap around Emma’s status as Henry’s birth mother, that first drink between them might’ve ended very differently.

But it hadn’t played out that way. And now was a shitty time to re-try.

In that forest, Regina had gone from being Emma’s one steady point in this whole stupid ordeal to being blown halfway across a clifftop. It was fucked, because before that, Emma always knew exactly where she stood with Regina. Maybe it was on her bad side, maybe it was in the line of fire but even when Regina hated her it was because she accepted Emma for _exactly_ who she was. Regina despised Emma’s role as the Savior, she resented her position as Henry’s birth mother, she was furious when Emma played the part of hero in every foiled plan - but Regina had never expected Emma to be any other way.

This was who and what Emma was. These were the cards they were dealt. These were the characters they played. Regina _accepted_ that.

But now Emma, self-destructive as always, had thrown open the door to a spectacular rejection and tossed them both through. She’d shattered what little equilibrium and mutual respect they’d finally gained over the years. She’d changed the whole game. She had royally fucked up.

_Good job, Emma. Great consistency._

Emma had nearly no control over her magic now. The world crackled and sparked, filigree threads traced along the glass of her windshield. Emma just needed to hold on a little while longer. She was on her way to Gold. This would all be over soon. She would never hurt Henry or Regina, or anyone in her family again. Not by magic.

_Just stop thinking about her._

The bug’s radio started to cycle wildly through stations. Emma took one hand off the wheel and divided her attention to mash buttons, and from the corner of her eye she saw a flash of white on the road. She instinctively turned the wheel before she had the chance to recognise the Snow Queen and actively plough the bitch down.

A second later, Emma had crashed again.

*

Waking to the Dairy Fuck was an even shittier way for Emma to regain consciousness than the last. On top of that, every time the woman tried to convince Emma _not_ to go to Gold it only strengthened her resolve.

“You’re not gonna hurt me, you need me,” Emma spat and turned away.

But the statuesque witch was already in front of her, imploring: “Don’t do this!”

“What the—” And that’s when Emma realised: “You’re not here!” Emma reached into her and the woman flurried into snowflakes. Unfortunately, she reformed.

“If I could be, I would. I am trying to protect you and that is the truth.”

“I don’t care what you say – _that’s_ the truth.” Emma strode through her, satisfied as she burst into pieces.

_The fuck is with Storybrooke today?_

Emma hauled herself back into the dented bug and roared onto the road.

“FUCK!” Emma hammered the steering wheel with red-silver sparked hands. Everyone was so goddamn determined she shouldn’t get rid of this magic, yet _no one_ was prepared to help her get it under control. Or if they were – like Regina and Henry – there was absolutely no possible way they could. Gold was her only option.

Did that make Emma pause, that someone like Gold had offered to help her with seemingly no personal gain? Sure as shit it did. But she had reached the point where someone was going to die. If it couldn’t be the Snow Queen, then it would be her and Emma didn’t want that, so...

_Any port in a shitstorm._

It was a situation Emma had been in too many times before: Love she could not bear to lose up against a problem that seemed insurmountable. The love thing was usually murky, but the solution rarely was -- If Emma didn’t have her magic, well… Henry and Regina would be disappointed for a while, but would they love her anyway?

_Why am I putting Regina in this equation?_

The Swan Family, the Charmings – they’d love Emma without her magic. Probably more than they did now. They would survive Emma being normal, thrive in it even - they had always been this way. Emma was an anomaly. Fairy tales aside, a destined True Love and a Believer’s heart were the only enchanted things between them.

By the time Emma finally pulled up in front of the mansion Gold had directed her to, she knew what she had to do. It was time she freed herself of this curse.

Emma would rid herself of this monster.

She would be normal again.

*****

****

**_8\. [ But we will be tied together ]_ **

Regina had left the Charmings’ apartment before them, but she was buoyed by the fact they had taken her “screw having _normal_ kids” speech to heart. Maybe they were dim heroes, but they were heroes all the same.

Captain Guyliner and Snow Queen-lite had already slipped away into the evening, but Regina put as much stock in either of them helping Emma as she did in dime-store heels - they might walk the distance, but ultimately they would fall apart as soon as they got to the ball.

This would be her show.

Gold was the only other person in Storybrooke capable of stripping Emma of her magic. Regina didn’t bother with his shop – a spell powerful enough to destroy the Savior needed space and distance from the town, unless Gold wanted to kill everyone in it. She was at least ninety-eight per cent sure he did not.

There was a buzz in the night air, more so even than her now ever-present sense of Emma’s uncontrolled power. It didn’t take Regina more than an hour to find the towering mansion on a clifftop overlooking a previously unknown section of Storybrooke. If it weren’t for the overgrown frontage and unsightly amount of dark magic streaming through the shingled roof, it might have made a decent summer house.

Regina strutted through the open side gates. Off to one darkened corner, Hook was tied to a fence while Gold serenaded him with lukewarm evil. Neither seemed to notice her presence. It would’ve been rude of her to interrupt so she left them to it. If she was lucky, they’d heckle each other to death before the night was through.

_Two down, one to go._

Around the building, the door lock had been broken and was covered in a fresh sheet of ice. Regina waved it open with a flourish – and suddenly felt far less cocky. Every surface inside sparked with uncontrolled magic. A rumble and flash came from the Main Hall to her right and in that moment it dawned on Regina that she had come here to play hero – a role she felt completely unsuited for – to a woman who most days, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to kill or crawl inside until the world ended.

_What the hell am I doing here?_

Henry’s face sprang into Regina’s mind, his trusting eyes, the smell of his hair as she held him, relieved he had made it out of Neverland alive - Emma crushed in with her, body warm and unabashedly against hers as they held their son… And Regina knew no matter what happened between her and _Miss Swan_ ; no matter how ill-equipped she was to play hero, she would risk her life a thousand times to rescue Henry’s mother.

With that thought in mind, Regina slipped off her gloves and coat. She ran a shaking and perhaps vain hand through her long hair and absently smoothed the front of her vest. 

_For Henry._

As she stalked her way to the place she would find Emma, Regina heard voices.

“Elsa. What the hell are you doing here? You have to leave now.”

 _What an excellent idea..._ Regina heard sparks again and was momentarily blinded by a flash of light as she reached the entrance to the hall.

“I'm sorry. I won't let you do this.”

Regina rolled her eyes and swaggered in behind Snow Queen-lite.

“My powers are out of control, there’s no other way. Please--” _There._ Emma saw her. The mix of relief and blind fear on the blonde’s drawn face stopped Regina short.

Elsa prattled on, “You didn't give up on m—”

“Regina?”

Regina had meant to be stony-faced, but the tone in Emma’s voice when she said her name made her smile ever so slightly and in that split-second, her eyes said a thousand things she hadn’t meant to say, made promises and reassurances -- she would not abandon Emma to this moment, she was glad to see her, when this was over there was much to discuss.

Regina locked it down quickly behind a sleek sneer.

Elsa turned, startled, and Regina sniped: “Oh, look – superfluous character.”

“Regina, you’re here…” Elsa forced it out brightly, a complex series of emotions on her overly Disney-esque face.

“And you can go,” the once-an-Evil-Queen snarled.

“Regina…” A warning from Emma to play nice. Regina folded her arms across her chest and leant back on her heels, and Emma turned to Elsa, her smile tight but apologetic, as warm as she could make it. “Elsa, thank you so much. …But you should go.”

Lights flickered and popped - Emma flinched as the chandelier showered sparks around them.

“Are you sure?” Elsa shot a sideways glance at the dark-haired woman who had clearly and pointedly dismissed her, intent now on the glow emanating from beneath a far door. “I could—”

“I’m sure,” Emma said firmly, though she shook with uncontrolled power and something else Elsa could only guess at.

The taller blonde nodded, moved as if to approach Emma but thought better of it. Between magic and Regina, she didn’t think she’d make it through alive. Reluctantly, she left.

And then it was just Regina and Emma. Alone together. Again.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?”

Emma gaped at Regina, blinked slowly, shook her head. “Seriously? _That’s_ how you’re gonna react to this situation?” Emma hardened her jaw and a row of lights to her right finally exploded into darkness. “I am about to kill us in a mansion with shitty wiring and you want to _yell at me about it?_ ”

Regina rolled her dark eyes, arms still folded across her chest. “What would you have me do? Praise you for running off like a child and leaving me unconscious in the woods? Congratulate you for your good judgement in making a deal with _Rumpelstiltskin_?”

“I am doing the best I can!” Emma shouted hoarsely, and another section of lights blew into oblivion. The air crackled, and the hair on the back of Regina’s neck stood in warning.

“There’s _nothing else_ I can do here!” Emma went on, raw-mouthed and desperate. “I hurt my parents, I hurt Henry - I hurt _you_ , Regina.” She broke apart, sobbed, “I nearly killed both of us out there in the forest. _What do you expect me to do?”_

“Not this,” Regina hissed, and pointed a vicious finger at the rattling double doors. Something on the other side fought to get out, to get Emma in; it tasted bitter to Regina, just as it had when she’d smelled traces of it in that burnt section of forest. “I don’t know what Gold promised you, Emma, but you won’t find it behind those doors.”

“He didn’t promise me anything,” Emma said coldly. “Just… relief, from this.”

“Gold—”

“--Doesn’t do anything unless it benefits him – I know, I’m not stupid Regina. But right now, any benefit he gains from a magicless Savior is far outweighed by me not accidentally hurting the people I love.”

Regina stepped heedlessly toward her, brow furrowed in disbelief, a wet hurt in her eyes. “You really think that getting rid of your magic is going to solve all of your problems?”

“Not _all_ of them, but a few of the immediate ones yeah.” As if to make Emma’s point, the chandelier exploded overhead again. Emma jumped from its rain of sparks and shook her hands violently, clenched her fists to hold it all in. “I can’t go on like this.” Tears welled again. “I can’t control it.”

Regina stepped forward: “I could teach you—”

Emma practically threw herself backward, a finger pointed at Regina accusingly: “You can’t come near me!” Green eyes flashed, panicked anger with a background of anguish, the hollowed pain of a woman damaged long ago – a look Regina recognised all too well because she too had worn it for so many years.

Regina stepped towards Emma again, palms raised between them tentatively.

“Don’t come any closer!” Emma threw out her hands and a shockwave of magic shot forth, but Regina had expected it and she disappeared momentarily in a billow of purple smoke.

When Regina reappeared, she took another pointed step toward Emma.

“ _Regina_!” Emma threw magic but on purpose this time, aimed at the woman whose mere presence threatened her very existence.

Again, Regina was ready. Again, she magically avoided the blow. A feral grin curved her mouth, nostrils flared - her dark eyes seemed to flow with molten rock. Regina almost purred, “It seems you can gain some control, Miss Swan.”

“Are you—” Emma paused, unable to believe what was happening. “--Are you _enjoying this_?”

“What’s not to enjoy?” Regina parried, wickedness in her tone, danger in her smile. “Magic isn’t all curses and Happy Endings and life-altering power. Sometimes it’s just… tossing spells around.” She coaxed a fireball to life in the palm of her hand, stroked it like a kitten and then snuffed it out.

“You’re… sick. You’re deranged.”

“Not true, Miss Swan,” Regina snapped, her face fierce but injured. “I am not sick or deranged. I am certainly not ordinary, or _normal_ as you might put it - but _this_ , my power - _your_ power, doesn’t make us monsters. It makes us… unique, yes - or… Maybe even _special_ …”

Emma stared at her, stunned. Regina’s words, stolen from a moment just weeks ago when it had been Emma reaching out to her. “This is different—”

“No it’s not,” Regina stopped her. A sudden rush of tears made it hard to see, Regina’s throat tight against things she found difficult to say. “I am not going to stop trying either. I may not be… as good at all this as you are. God knows I’d rather cast a curse and hope for the best than deal with my problems at the best of times…” Regina took a deep, shaken breath. “But then, I’m a villain. And you, Miss Swan, most certainly are not. Whatever you think getting rid of your magic will to solve, I can tell you – it won’t.”

Regina stepped towards Emma again, almost close enough now to touch and nothing new exploded, so she went on. “Being powerless – it doesn’t take a loss of magic to experience that. It is something you and I both know all too well.”

Emma looked at Regina with the same wide-eyed panic she’d felt before – not when she’d lost control of her magic, or thought Regina might kill her for hurting Henry, but in that heartbeat when she’d realised that Regina made something in the most wounded part of herself knit together and lie flat, in places she had only ever felt torn and crumpled.

It was more terrifying than anything Emma had felt before.

The air cracked like thunder, electricity raced across her skin. White-hot heat tore painfully through Emma’s chest and then the chandelier behind them jolted and shrieked. The chain that secured it to the rafters gave way - crystal and glass, bronze and steel crashed to the parquet floor and shattered with horrific force. Something hit Emma hard in the chest and she felt herself knocked to the ground before projectiles could flay her skin.

For a second everything was murky, the only sound Regina’s ragged breath in Emma’s ear.

*****


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Outside the timpani of her reckless veins, the room was quiet. No crackle and hiss, no thump of books, no rattle of doors – it was all perfectly still._  
> 
> _Into that delicate space, Regina moved slowly; slid her fingers under maroon lapels, between blonde hair and leather to curl against Emma’s collarbone. The wide-eyed panic in old-copper green slipped away as Regina leaned inexorably closer."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Additional spoiler alert:** I make a reference to a conversation between Emma and Elsa regarding Regina (that took place in her bug) from episode **4x05** , so - be warned? Although, if you haven't seen these episodes, I imagine you're quite confused at this point anyway.
> 
>  **Rating:** This is it - the sections that start the **explicit** rating. It took longer to post than I wanted, but I do hope you'll think it was worth it. It also became quite voluminous, so I'm posting it in two parts but simultaneously, to avoid readus interruptus.  
>     
> It's going to get sweet in here, and then it's going to get _very dirty_. 

**NORMAL [Monsters]**

by

Syrensoul_Red

*****

 

**_9\. [ Take my shattered bones ]_ **

Dim light returned.

It took Emma a second to register the last wisps of purple as they dissipated, before she felt shards of glass in her back. Regina was heavy on her, soft yet firm, still braced for impact; arms on either side of Emma’s chest as she held her body over her like a shield.

Regina had turned her face into Emma’s jacket to protect it as she knocked Emma down and momentarily poofed them from the room, and now Emma meant to shift the dark strands that tickled her cheek and nose, but when her fingers tangled in Regina’s hair they just sort of stopped there, held to Regina’s skull. Cradled her carefully.

Regina’s shoulders ached, crystal and glass cut into her palms and her unbandaged knee where it touched the floor. A more piercing heat flared where Emma was, against her wrists, hipbones and thigh. But when she felt Emma’s hand stroke her, all she could do was press her forehead against bone and sinew, into the leather and beat of the woman beneath her and breathe deeply for a moment, as unobtrusively as possible.

“You saved me.” The mix of surprise and straightforward recognition in Emma’s voice broke the moment.

Suddenly embarrassed, Regina cleared her throat and tried to push herself away, but there was no dignity to be gained. Glass shards tore at her palms and Regina hissed pain through gritted teeth.

“Don’t move, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Regina rolled her eyes unseen. “Really, Miss Swan? Thank you.”

“I’m…” Emma exhaled carefully. “I’m sorry.” Her small words covered so much – the ridiculous things, exploding light fixtures, years of unrelenting antagonism - things neither she nor Regina were prepared to deal with in this brief moment and they pressed in, heavy and insurmountable.

“Miss Swan…”

Emma chuckled acidly; said “Madame Mayor--” in the most professional tone she could muster - her knee still caught in Regina’s skirt, left hand curved possessively into satin and pinstriped wool without having meant to, just the way they had landed and curled into each other naturally.

Emma understood what Regina was trying to do, was supportive, grateful even - but equally she realised the absurdity of trying to distance themselves from what was happening while they were still pressed so tightly against each other. Pretending, ignoring, denying could come later, Emma knew that. They were both very good at that.

Right now, she just wished old habits didn’t exist. That later would not come. That Regina would shift her knee just a fraction higher, more firmly against the ridged denim between her thighs…

The remaining lights in the hall flared suddenly, air crackled and bit and Emma’s ears popped with a sudden change in air pressure. Overhead, books rattled on towering shelves while the double doors behind them clattered menacingly. Emma squeezed shut her eyes, lips moved wordlessly as a litany of curses poured through her.

 _I’m a monster. I’m a fucking monster. This will never stop. The closer I get to someone, the more likely I’m gonna kill them. I am going to fucking kill somebody. I’m gonna kill Henry, I’m gonna kill Regina – I won’t survive that._ _I won’t survive…_

Emma knew suddenly and overwhelmingly that she had to get through those double doors, to whatever Gold had set there – _salvation_. Like a caged animal, wild and blindly panicked, she pushed herself up, ignored the slick slice of shards in her palms -- and found herself forced back by a weight on her chest. She struggled against it, frantically lashed out.

Beyond her, a voice that made no sense – _“Miss Swan”_ – seemed far away yet right against her ear; Emma paid it no heed, swung her elbow, pushed and flailed, and then, through the fog: “Emma! Emma STOP!”

And she did. Emma didn’t know why. But she came back to herself, to Regina’s voice, and she was so tired. “I have to go. You have to let me go, Regina. _I have to do this._ ”

“No, you don’t.” Regina was half in Emma’s lap, undignified and wounded but she put her bloodied palms on Emma’s shoulders and hoped the maroon leather would be forgiving. Regina’s voice broke from sternum to larynx and it burnt her cheeks. “I’m not going to let you go. I promised Henry I wouldn’t let you.”

“Henry?” Emma’s voice was so small.

“Do you really think our son would be ok with this? With you getting rid of a part of you that makes you special?”

The smallest spark of hope drowned in the brine of Emma’s eyes. “ _Henry_ makes me special, I’m nothing without him. What good am I as a Savior if I can’t save anyone? I can’t be a hero like this, if I hurt him again… It didn’t _work_ , Regina! The magic between Henry and I – he touched me and it didn’t work. For fuck’s sake, I threw him across a forest.”

Regina’s brow furrowed, frustration in deep-copper eyes. “What exactly did you expect would happen?”

Emma stopped short, tight-lipped as she thought about it for a second, as though she hadn’t before - and she hadn’t really. “I don’t know– that it would… Break the curse or something? Centre me? Help me get control of myself?”

Regina leant back, disbelief in her raised eyebrow. “You thought our _son_ could do that? This isn’t a curse _,_ Miss Swan -- You thought a _child_ could somehow exert control over the emotions you, an adult, couldn’t handle? You do know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Emma clenched her jaw, looked pointedly away; muttered, “I do now.”

Regina glared at Emma. “Good.” She folded her arms over her chest and resettled herself, regal despite her position perched on Emma’s thighs. “This is about _who you are_. Magic is a part of you, Swan. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get it under control.”

Emma scoffed. “I already accepted that I was the Savior, and everything that goes with it when we were in Neverland.”

“Yes, and as convincing as that was…” Regina held up a hand before Emma could argue. “Clearly it’s not going to be that easy.” Regina caught herself, tilted her head. “Or -- maybe it is.”

“I don’t—”

“What happened today in the forest?”

Dark heat blotched Emma’s cheeks, her hands crackled and she pressed tight fists against denim hips. “I don’t think this is gonna help.”

Regina ignored her. “You held my hand and everything stopped. All the magic—” _Not all of it,_ her brain quipped -- “Everything went quiet. You were in control.”

“And then I wasn’t,” Emma said darkly, her point punctuated by the pop and fizz of electricity in a few remaining lights, and the energetic rattle of whatever loomed behind Gold’s tempestuous doors.

“Before that.” Regina tried to keep exasperation from her voice. “What was it about Snow and Charming, and Henry, that made you feel out of control? Why was it different with me?”

“I don’t know,” Emma snapped, annoyed. But she did, at least a little, and it made her calves tighten, her body tensed to flee, that voice in her head shouted - _Run!_ and it was all Emma knew how to do, every fibre of her being screamed...

Regina pushed: “I think you do know.”

“Dammit, Regina!—” Emma bit her tongue, because it would do her no good. Evil Queen or Storybrooke’s Mayor, this woman would not be intimidated or shouted down. Instead Emma crossed her legs at the ankles and took perverse pleasure as Regina struggled to maintain her balance.

“ _Miss Swan_ —” It was a warning.

Emma sighed, inherently uncomfortable but unable to avoid the question any longer. “It wasn’t anything really. Just… My parents, everyone – I terrified them yesterday, my magic… Mary Margaret wouldn’t even let me hold the baby—” Shelves rattled, books thudded heavily to the floor and Emma bit her lip against it. “And Henry – god, he is so trusting, I don’t know how you did that—”

It was an offhanded compliment but Regina burnt with pride.

“—But it’s not permanent, you know? Just because he’s my kid…” Emma shook her head, and magic hissed along the cuts of her palms so she clenched her fists tighter. “You can break that, you can break that out of a kid.” It was haunted, the light momentarily hollowed out of her green eyes. But Emma swept on. “It was so easy for that Snow Bitch to rile me up. I blew the wall out of the fucking jail.”

“Impressive,” Regina said lowly.

Emma glared at her. “Thanks, not really.” Then she straightened. “See that’s the thing! You don’t care if I blow up a wall or, burn down a piece of forest - it’s just not an issue.”

The Mayor in Regina disagreed but she tried not to raise an eyebrow too pointedly.

“I always know where I stand with you Regina. You get pissed when I use my magic to break a curse or… ruin your plans or whatever – but you _accept_ that about me. You accept that it’s a part of me, so when I saw you in the forest, maybe… I don’t know. Maybe that was enough.” Emma trailed off awkwardly, stared at the hem of her jacket so she wouldn’t have to meet Regina’s eyes.

Regina was grateful, because all she had there was understanding and the wet sting of something she wasn’t quite prepared to talk about yet. Regina cleared her throat quietly, reluctant to push into whatever came next but knew it couldn’t be avoided, not if this was to end with Emma’s power intact. “Then what happened?”

The muscle in Emma’s jaw worked over gritted teeth, and malachite eyes scorched. “You know what happened.” A gravelled sneer. “You were there.”

Regina turned in place, ignored the pain as she put her knees to the sharply littered ground on either side of Emma’s thighs. She sat back against Emma’s knees, palms flat on the leather skirt twisted in her lap. “You lost control.”

“I lost control,” Emma agreed tightly, and continued to do so. Books tumbled throughout the hall, followed by their shelves. They splintered on the parquet floor, plaster and wood creaked and groaned around them.

Regina knew she walked a dangerous line. She waited long, tense moments as Emma stared her down. Then she said, “You kissed—” And was ready for the explosion.

Regina’s fingers wrapped tightly in Emma’s dark leather lapels, braced for the shockwave that hit her in the gut, head bowed against a shower of sparks that rained down on them. A ceiling-high bookcase at the front of the hall creaked and squealed; buckled away from the wall and shuddered to a precarious angle. Plaster dust filled the air, mingled with the dense cloud of smoke that swirled around the rafters. 

“You have to stop!” Emma yelled, but did not try as hard as before to get control of her power. It seemed like a good enough end to the conversation.

Not for Regina. She waited for Emma’s magic to beat itself exhausted against ceiling and floor, door and light socket, the way she had when Henry was a toddler and prone to tantrums. There was a sense of this here, a heedless fit of destruction.

When it eventually died down, Emma realised the woman above her shook... Regina _chuckled._ It infuriated Emma, livid anyone could possibly revel in this moment, in her lack of control, vulnerability, despair and she spat, “Are you _fucking kidding me_?

But Regina’s red-stained mouth slid ever-so-gently to the white glint of teeth and there was no malice there - a warmth to her humour, an invitation for Emma to appreciate the absurdity of the situation: The two of them stranded in a sea of glass, a supposed sworn enemy perched on Emma’s body like an island, the raging storm of magic that buffeted them together.

Emma fought it, fought it so hard but eventually, the smallest hint of a smile trilled the edge of her lip and she shook her head ruefully. “Fuck you, Regina.”

Regina raised a regal eyebrow, but knew she had Emma. It was safe to try again. “You kissed… my neck.”

Emma’s frown was unweaponised now, glare far less compelling and she was pissed about that. Regina did not play fair, never had. “Yeah well – you started it.” There was petulance to Emma’s tone and she regretted it immediately; at Regina’s arch expression, she regretted it more.

“ _I_ started it? I believe I was just standing there in the woods, Miss Swan.”

“You started it the day I went down that hole to rescue Henry and you nearly planted one on me and _would you please stop calling me ‘Miss Swan’_?”

Regina blinked several times. Her posture grew noble, glass under her knees be damned -- A honeyed glint swirled through umber eyes, a dangerous curve to the bow of Regina’s lips and she leant into Emma, close enough that danger prickled through blonde hair. Against her ear, Regina breathed, “ _Emma…”_

It was low and delicious like nails on each ridge of Emma’s spine, like urgent fingers clutched to her in the night and her eyelids slid closed, head lolled forward of its own accord. “Don’t do that either,” Emma rasped coarsely. Regina’s throaty chuckle rumbled through her.

“Well I have to call you something.” Regina leant back, as though unaffected by the moment. _She wasn’t._ “Frankly I resent the implication that any of this,” Regina gestured at the diminishing space between them, “was prompted by me.”

“Bullshit.” Emma sneered then. “You know exactly what you’re doing Regina – every second, every word, every time you move you know exactly what will happen because you’ve planned it out so carefully that when something doesn’t go your way – when someone doesn’t act the way you want them to, you don’t know what to do with yourself. You can’t breathe.”

Emma chuckled lowly, relieved finally to be on familiar, comfortable ground, while Regina stiffened above her. “That’s why you hated me when I came to Storybrooke – I threw a chainsaw into _everything_ you’d laid out so perfectly…” Emma shrugged her twisted shoulders, palms splayed in the only section of floor that was relatively glass-free. “And then I took a chainsaw to your little apple tree.”

Regina was a gnarled lip and flared nostrils, a violet cloud swirled through dark brown eyes. She wanted to strangle the woman beneath her, fingers twitched with the very force of it, every rotted fibre of her being flared and bellowed against too-tight skin.

But she knew what Emma was doing.

And the blonde’s hands no longer crackled, and the shelves no longer hurtled books to the floor, and the light beneath the treacherous doors had dimmed. So Regina forced her short nails to scrape the pieces of glass from her palms and sat back majestically, revelled in Emma’s confusion when she did not punch her hard in the face.

“Very good, _Miss Swan_.” Regina smiled, dangerously. “It seems there are ways we can interact that you are _perfectly_ comfortable with.”

Emma said nothing. For a second she had no words. It wasn’t a reaction she had expected. “And you’re… ok with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Emma faltered. “I don’t-- I dunno, there’s nothing new about it? I… I kissed you.”

Regina’s smile was brief, mildly triumphant but she conceded: “And I let you.”

Emma stared, a turbulent sea; not quite hearing, not quite understanding - not quite letting herself believe. She folded her arms on her chest. “But that’s… I mean, that’s not…” Emma’s mouth snapped shut, head tilted, one eye examined Regina suspiciously.

Regina wished Emma was not quite so intentionally dense, or perhaps so wounded, but all at once wouldn’t have it any other way. “I am not going to deny there has been a… _something_ between us, Miss— _Emma_ ,” Regina forced, relieved her voice sounded far steadier than she was. “But it has always been there. Nothing that happened in the last day has changed that.” _At least, not for the worse_ , a small voice whispered. Regina scraped her palms against it and went on stiltedly. “It’s just… a little more obvious now.”

_Regina is not brushing this off._

At this, Emma spun and free-fell, her heart kicked against buckled ribs, she choked on the sand in her desert mouth. Parts of her broke, brain and tongue – but they were not wounded, it was more of a… Resetting. A realignment. A perfectly splinted bone. Outside the timpani of her reckless veins, the room was quiet. No crackle and hiss, no thump of books, no rattle of doors – it was all perfectly still.

Into that delicate space, Regina moved slowly. She slid her fingers under dark-maroon lapels, between blonde hair and leather to curl against Emma’s collarbone. The wide-eyed panic in oxidised-copper green slipped away as Regina leant inexorably closer.

In the absence of damaging sparks, Emma was finally able to put her hands on Regina’s waist where it flared to hips yet remained deceptively small. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin and, to the tinkle of crushed glass beneath Regina’s knees, let the last breath between them disappear into Regina’s mouth.

That first touch of lips like falling from a cliff, terrified and weightless but never hitting ground; heat and breath and the perfectly tilted axis of faces. Each woman pushed just a little further, a little deeper, asked for just a little bit more. Emma may have moaned, or maybe it was Regina, at the first wet glide of tongues, bodies crushed tightly together.

It wasn’t a True Love’s Kiss, there was no curse to be broken. It was just Regina Mills, kissing Emma Swan, in a broken-down mansion, because that was the clearest, most succinct way to tell her: I accept you for all that you are. Every last infuriating gasp of you.

Emma… She wasn’t afraid anymore. Maybe she could accept these parts of herself. Nothing had changed even though everything had, and she thought, _Oh, there I am..._

If Emma had any breath left it would have been stolen by the shockwave that jolted through her, a familiar bolt of released magic so now, at least _that_ problem was over. But the kiss, this slow battle of tongues and hands pushed urgently at clothing; this hot fight for skin had just begun.

*****

 

**_10\. [ These hands; this weary heart ]_ **

Emma tugged at the slippery fabric of Regina’s shirt until it came free from the leather waistband of her skirt and she ran her thumbs across the warm strip of skin there, fingertips against the dips and ridges of Regina’s ribcage and she fitted perfectly into Emma’s hands. Regina kissed her deeper, filled her mouth with a low rumble, nails dug firmly through the fabric of Emma’s shirt and there was altogether too much clothing.

Emma tried to help remove the leather jacket but ended the struggle when Regina pushed it roughly as far as her elbows, then reached for the zipper on the front of Emma’s shirt. Emma clutched the leather on Regina’s thighs because it was all she could reach now and kissed her furiously, ignored the clack of their teeth for the dangerous taste of her mouth.

“EMMA!”

Flurried limbs and swallowed curses at the sound of Hook’s voice -- they threw themselves from each other. A second later he was in the room, heavy boots crunched on glass and twisted metal. Each woman was sprawled in the remnants of chandelier with palms full of crystal; Regina had finally sacrificed her favourite leather skirt to the wreckage of the hall floor. But their eyes had not unlocked even though their bodies had parted.

Hook seemed briefly surprised that it was not Elsa in the room, but recovered quickly. “Swan! Are you all right?”

He leant over to help Emma up, hands and arms around her body and it was too awful compared with Regina, the cheap-swill cologne of him and she shrugged him off, eyes still trapped by amber in dark chocolate.

“I’m fine,” Emma muttered, and crossed the gulf to Regina, just a few small but too-far steps. Emma offered her hand without realising it like the woman’s very own Princess Charming. Regina cleared her throat, let herself be helped up but tried to break the tableau by brushing the glass from her skirt primly.

“Your magic, Swan?” Hook asked, against the mildest sense of unease that he could not quite place, beyond the fact that the Crocodile now had his heart.

“She didn't do it,” Regina said brusquely, a sliver of pride to her jaw. It clenched away when Swarthy-and-Unwashed threw his arms around Emma. A snarl tugged Regina’s lip.

Emma did not return the hold, arms held awkwardly out to her sides and she tried to think of a way to extricate herself that would not arouse suspicion, but would also not involve punching. It was difficult. “Wow, I've never seen people so happy about me not doing something,” Emma joked forcefully.

“We'll find another way to defeat the Snow Queen,” Hook said. “Together.”

When Hook went in for a kiss, Emma couldn’t stand it any longer. She pushed him away, harder than she’d intended and he stumbled on a spray of debris. Regina took a large step back rather than steady him.

Hook found his balance, straightened slowly. He stared at Emma - a hundred questions pierced through her, and while she knew eventually she would have to answer all of them, she was not ready right now. She smiled weakly, stepped in and put a hand loosely on his shoulder. “Sorry. It’s been a long night, and I’m - covered in glass.”

He seemed to accept this, or at least nodded curtly; but then his eyes continued to bore strangely into her.

“Are you alright? If you look at me any harder you're gonna drill a hole in my head.”

Hook forced a smile. “I'm just relieved. You should go outside. I have a feeling there are a lot of worried people who will be glad to see you.”

Emma felt a breath brush her spine and knew it was Regina’s. She leant back without thinking; squeezed Hook’s arm one last time and left him in the hall.

*

As soon as they were away from Hook, Regina slid her open hand into the curve of Emma’s back, her mouth at her shoulder and Emma leant into her so the woman’s lips could whisper against her ear.

“We should talk,” Regina said lowly.

Emma turned her head, mouth a mere ache from Regina’s. “Talking wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Before she could enjoy the flush that overtook Regina’s face, the hitch in her chest and the ragged _fuck me_ in her dark eyes – Elsa stepped from the shadows.

Regina jumped as though burned, hurried away but Emma reached for her, decisively laced their fingers and pulled her firmly back. Regina was frozen, unable to gracefully step away from the situation - but a part of her was also unwilling. Regina stared at their knuckles locked perfectly together, bones like braille and she wished she could read whatever it was they were writing there.

Elsa faltered briefly then smiled broadly at Emma, though Regina caught the smallest flicker of something more complicated in her wide eyes. Emma did not. Elsa reached out her hand and Emma took it with her free one, squeezed it tightly.

“It looks like things were able to get better between you two again.” Elsa grinned at the tight hold Emma kept on Regina’s hand.

Emma shrugged. “I guess you can get them back.”

Regina didn’t know if she was more surprised to hear she had been the topic of a conversation that didn’t involve cursing her existence, or by Emma’s embarrassed, fidgeted smile.

“I’m so happy for you, Emma.” And it was true - Elsa’s voice was filled with warmth and kindness.

Emma knew it would probably never be this easy again, to introduce to someone her strange intertwining with Regina Mills - or even if she ever would. _What the hell is going on here?_ Emma pulled her hand from Regina’s, tucked it firmly into her pocket and said “Thanks,” with a shoulder shrugged to her ear.

The briefest frown of confusion crossed Elsa’s face, but she asked, “Your magic…?”

“Still there,” Emma confirmed proudly. “Are my parents…?”

Elsa nodded. “Out the front. I saw them arrive with Henry. I didn’t eavesdrop on you,” she added in a rush. “I was just still here because... Well I didn’t want to get too far, in case—”

“--We killed each other?” Regina finished drily, still sure she disliked this woman but no longer thinking of setting her on fire.

“Well… yes.”

Emma squeezed Elsa’s hand one last time and let it go. She turned to Regina. “We should get out there, I need to see Henry.”

Regina nodded, but then something in turbulent green eyes punched the air from her lungs: a panicked need for reassurance, a terror. Regina wondered when that had happened, when it had become her place to soothe the hollow ache in Emma. But maybe it wasn’t new at all. Maybe they had been looking to each other like this for quite some time.

Regina couldn’t find the words and now she didn’t need them; instead she threaded her fingers through sunlight and pulled Emma’s head down until she caught her lips. Regina pressed into her willing mouth, and her tongue lathed away the last knot of Emma’s fear.

Emma forgot herself, ran her hands over Regina’s tight leather skirt and dug her fingers into the curve of her ass, and Elsa had the good grace to smile and walk away. Regina found herself backed up against a wall, Emma’s knee between her thighs; the blonde pushed against her and Regina tried so hard to stifle a moan but it escaped and echoed around them. She wanted to drag Emma closer, skin against skin until friction caught fire but instead, Regina urged her back.

“They’re waiting for us.” Regina’s voice sounded foreign even to her own ears: too throaty, too unravelled.

“Shit.” Emma rested her forehead on Regina’s satin collar and breathed deeply. The woman smelled like dark promises and twisted sheets.

“You should go first,” Regina added, and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind Emma’s ear. Apparently, curls covered all manner of sin. Emma would pass as magically rumpled but otherwise presentable. Regina on the other hand, with her shirt untucked and her cheeks on fire, would not slip past so easily.

“We’re not done here,” Emma whispered, an electric shock across Regina’s skin, but she pushed away from the cold wall, the hot body and strode out towards the landing.

Regina breathed heavily, her back and palms flat against the plaster as she watched the woman go - an exaggerated strut to Emma’s denim hips and Regina knew this might kill her. She had avoided getting too tangled up with Emma Swan for exactly this reason. But Emma’s taste still lingered on Regina’s tongue, her fingertips buzzed with the feel of her and Regina knew there were worse ways to die, worse reasons to throw it all away on a chance for a Happy Ending.

Maybe it couldn’t be found here. But she was certainly not done looking.

Regina tucked in her shirt and smoothed her hair as best she could, squared her shoulders and remembered carefully how to breathe. She pulled on her coat from the stand where she’d left it; tugged her collar up against the night and strode out to re-join Emma.

*

_“Emma! Did you do it?”_

Regina stepped onto the landing just in time to hear Emma announce, in the tight confines of her mother’s hug, “I didn’t - thanks to Regina.”

Mary Margaret’s first reaction was a kind of startled dismay and flash of abject horror, which would have brought a past Regina great joy. But they were no longer those people, so far removed from Snow White and the Evil Queen as to be unrecognisable. Mary Margaret caught sight of Regina and her face shifted quickly into warmth and gratitude; she mouthed ‘ _thank you’_ over her daughter’s shoulder.

Regina, surprised, nodded curtly in response.

“I'm so, so glad.” Mary Margaret clutched Emma tighter. “Just... Please don't change.”

“I don’t want to,” Emma assured, and squeezed back.

David put an arm around his teary wife. “We love you, no matter what.”

“I know.” When Emma caught sight of Henry, she felt like she might explode – not with magic this time, or at least not the same kind of magic as before. Just with his sweet face, and all the infinite forgiveness he seemed to contain. “Hey, kid - how are you?”

Henry pressed into Emma’s arms. “Just glad you're okay.”

Emma hugged him so tightly she worried he might break, cupped his cheek in her hand with love and apology in her eyes. She felt Regina watched them - Emma stretched out her arm and beckoned the brunette to join them without taking her eyes off Henry. Emma just wanted to see his smile when he shouted, “Mom!”

Then Regina had crushed Henry to her chest and Emma used the moment to wrap her arms around both of them, because it was something they had done before and would arouse no suspicion. Just a perfect Swan-Mills family moment.

“You did it,” Henry whispered, his voice a broken creak of wonder and relief.

“Did you really doubt her, kid?” Emma asked, and smiled so sweetly at Regina that she nearly reared back, a glint of terror, confusion in her eyes. Emma squeezed Regina’s upper arm in a way that would have seemed casual to everyone else.

“Yes, well…” Regina stuttered. “I think, maybe we all did it.”

Emma chuckled quietly at her, kissed their son’s head and stepped back to give Regina room; never let go of his hand.

“So, your magic...” Mary Margaret was tentative, scared to ask the question, scared to know the answer, scared to set-off or hurt her daughter in any way. “Are you in control of it again?”

Emma smiled broadly, proud and unabashed. “Absolutely.” She tugged Henry in next to her and faced the night, rolled up her sleeves. Henry shot a questioning look at his other mom, hand still tight in his but Regina merely shrugged. She had no idea what Emma planned to do next.

Emma wriggled her fingers and in her outstretched hands, her magic crackled to life. Multi-coloured waves of it thundered into the clear night sky and as it reached its zenith, it exploded into fireworks. It was corny and show-offy and completely over the top, and Regina shot a look of wry bemusement over Henry’s head that Emma chose pointedly to ignore.

When Henry said, “Cool,” Regina relaxed and let herself enjoy the display. Perhaps it was a night fit for celebration.

“Mom, when did you get that?”

Emma followed her son’s gaze to her wrist, and her smile faded when she caught sight of the yellow ribbon. “I don't know...”

Regina heard the tinge of alarm in Emma’s voice, turned to her tight gripped-wrist - caught a mimicked movement from Elsa in her peripheral vision and immediately tensed. “Emma? What’s wrong?”

“Emma, what’s happening?” The taller blonde used all her strength against the ribbon. “It won't come off.”

“Mine won't either.”

Regina stepped past Henry and grabbed Emma’s hand, waved magic across the yellow strand, and again as frustration and a sense of dread settled in her chest. The wounds on Emma's skin disappeared, but nothing else. “My magic won’t undo it.”

Regina squeezed Emma’s palm and Emma squeezed back with nearest fingers, but really she needed more. Then the ribbon glowed and Emma gasped, clutched her stomach.

“I feel it, too,” Elsa said. “It's like it's funnelling all my magic away, like it’s... harnessing it somehow.”

“It doesn’t tickle,” Emma muttered, and Regina put a hand on Emma’s shoulder because she could not gather her into her arms, and there was no one to immediately kill to make the ache stop.

David asked: “Any idea what this is?”

“No. But I have a pretty good idea where it came from.” Emma’s stony expression read _Snow Bitch_ and Regina agreed.

It wasn’t over. Of course it wasn’t over – this was Storybrooke, and it never was.

“Do you think it’s…”

“--Part of her spell of Shattered Sight?” Emma finished for Elsa, face taut and garish. “Of course it is, what else could it be? I have my powers under control, you have yours…” Emma shrugged bitterly. “All that’s left is for us to become sister-wives to the Bitch-Queen of Crazy.”

Elsa looked confused. “Sister-w—”

“Never mind.” Emma turned, nearly collided with Regina’s face she was so close. Emma forced herself to step back though her body protested. “Regina is there anything you can think of – a spell or a potion, or a charm - _anything_ we could use to stop this assho- _witch_ ,” Emma corrected herself, with a glance at Henry, “from going through with this thing?”

Regina stuttered, a pained expression on her face - there was so much hope directed at her and Regina was not used to it. It scraped her skin, clawed at her chest because she knew there was nothing that could be done, not if the curse was already underway. Curses came with two things: A specific, destructive purpose and a singular method of undoing – and neither of these could be undermined by flustered shots in the dark.

But the thought of letting Henry and Emma down - and even the Charmings at this point, if for no other reason than they meant something to the people Regina cared for – was more than she could handle. So Regina did something she never did, always avoided -- She offered hope where none existed. “There are some things in my vault we could try… Magical objects, a talisman, a few old books which might have something useful. Until I know more about the curse—this _spell -_ anything is possible…”

Mary Margaret looked relieved, David and Henry, the superfluous blonde. Emma squeezed her arm in thanks and Regina wouldn’t meet her eyes. If Emma always knew when she was lying - more so than with anyone else as she’d once claimed – then this was a gamble on a train wreck.

For now, Emma pushed on with apparently buoyed optimism. “See guys – there’s still hope! Elsa, why don’t you go and see if Belle’s found any more details about the spell? Mom, Dad--”

“We’ll go with Elsa,” Mary Margaret announced. To Emma, she murmured, “We’ll take Henry with us. Belle is watching the baby at Gold’s – there’s probably something we can do to help her from the library.” She added a little louder, “There are fold-outs there, so Henry can sleep...” It was directed at Regina.

Although that wasn’t the cause of her worry, Regina was grateful for the consideration. She smiled honestly at Mary Margaret for the first time in longer than she could remember. Maybe ever.

Flustered, Mary Margaret grabbed on to David; remembered what she was doing and turned back, pulled Emma into a fierce hug. “Don’t worry, Emma – we’ll fix this.”

Emma smiled in the circle of Mary Margaret’s arms. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” David quipped over their shoulders, and a part of Emma wanted to roll her eyes but knew that was exactly what he was going for.  It was all just a little too perfect.

_Charming._

Regina already had hold of Henry, some sort of whispered conspiracy going on between them and Emma waited her turn, almost patiently. “Anything I should know about?” Emma muttered into her son’s ear when she finally got him back.

Henry shook his head, smugness in his tone. “Not yet.”

Emma held him at arm’s length, exaggeratedly narrowed her eyes. “Is this a secret operation I’ve been _left out of_?” Her hurt was not entirely feigned.

 “If I told you that, it wouldn’t be a secret.” Her son’s grin was cheeky.

Emma let him have this one, kissed his cheek and reluctantly let him leave with her parents.

The party filed down the stairs and into David’s pickup. Regina stepped closer to Emma, wanted suddenly to lean her head against the blonde’s shoulder as she watched them go but of course didn’t. Regina was stunned when Emma slipped a hand into hers and held it tightly out of view.

As tail lights disappeared into the night, Regina knew it was time to confirm Emma’s superpower with a confession. “Emma, about the curse—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Emma said flatly, eyes fixed on the road. “I know what you did for them and I’m grateful, let’s just leave it at that.” Regina squeezed her hand, an apology that she couldn’t offer more and Emma squeezed back, let her go. “We should get to your vault.”

Regina’s brow corrugated, dark eyes questioned the woman who had just as much admitted there was nothing there for them now. “Why—”

“It’s cold, Regina. I’m not gonna stand on the steps of this crappy place all night and we told everyone we’d be at your vault so that’s where we’ll go.” Emma paused, continued haltingly. “And, maybe – I know it’s a long shot, but _maybe,_ we’ll find something you haven’t thought of and end this thing. I have to think it’s possible. I have to hope—” Emma stopped abruptly.

Regina tried to lighten the mood: “Your family gets a quarter from the Hope Commission every time one of you says that word - admit it.”

It didn’t work. Emma glared at her with sea-churned eyes. “There are a lot of ways that I am _nothing_ like my mother, Regina and hope is one of them. But I have to try.”

Regina slid her hand onto Emma’s belted hip, fingers under the edge of her jacket. “There’s nothing wrong with hope, Emma. I have it myself sometimes. About many things.”

Before Emma could ask anything more, push either of them into words they were not ready for, Regina stepped into her lean body. She grabbed Emma’s waist with both hands and tugged her in; Emma’s fingers tangled in Regina’s hair, lips parted at her insistent tongue and the pull and slide of her, every thought stolen when Regina rolled her hip into the tight denim between Emma thighs and then again, until Emma moaned into her mouth and Regina swallowed it down, breathless.

Regina pulled herself away. Her hand steadied Emma, a delicious curve to Regina’s bitten lips. “You’re right, it’s cold here. We should get to the vault.”

“Not cold anymore,” Emma rasped, and pulled Regina back into lips and teeth and tongue, tasted her mouth, searched for the heat of her between the silk lining of Regina’s coat and her satin shirt. Emma’s hand slid over Regina’s breast, felt a hard nipple and she knew it had nothing to do with the cold. Regina moaned and pressed herself against Emma’s fingers.

This time Emma stepped back. She let Regina sway, disoriented and breathless. A perverse flash of glee flickered into Emma’s smirk. “You’re right, we should get to your vault. Is your car here?”

She had seen the Merc in the flash of David’s headlights, but waited for Regina’s response anyway. Regina’s head was bowed and she breathed heavily through a thick curtain of hair. Eventually, Regina nodded.

Emma bit back her grin. “I have my bug. Do you want me to take the lead, or--”

Regina’s dark head reared back, a sudden flash of panic – _Is Hood still there? Did he leave Marian at the vault?_ The woman was an ice cube, that wasn’t the problem - but if _he_ was still there…

“Regina? Are you ok?”

Emma’s cold hand cupped Regina’s heated face and Regina leant into it, caressed it with her cheekbone. “There’s… There might be—Hood might be there.”

“Right…” The word rolled in Emma’s mouth like a stone, hard and rough. She didn’t know what to say then, didn’t feel she had a right to ask what Hood’s presence might mean to Regina, to _whatever it was_ that was happening here.

It was always going to be complicated. It was complicated before it began, before they’d even met, back when Queens were Evil and Curses were coming and family feuds lead to shattered worlds and dark magic. It would probably never get easier.

 _Maybe just, more_ _worth it…?_

All Emma really knew was that each time Regina kissed her, she wanted more. Of _everything_. And maybe right now that was enough. She grabbed Regina’s hand and pulled her toward the stairs. “Come on.”

“What? Where--”

“We’re going to your vault. I’m cold, it’s late, we have maybe seven hours til dawn hits and this ribbon traps me and Elsa in… whatever twisted love triangle Ice Tits is into. I for one don’t want to let that happen.” Emma eased Regina against the body of her black Mercedes, reached into the woman’s coat pocket for her keys and thrust them into her flustered hands.

Regina frowned, momentarily lost in all that had happened. “You think she’ll wait until dawn?”

“I think she’s the kind of bitch who wants to see fear on people’s faces so yeah – Elsa and I might’ve kicked-off this YaYa Sisterhood, but I think we have time before the real show starts.”

Regina hesitated, hand clenched on her open car door, salt-wrecked eyes. “What about Robin?”

Emma remained dismissive, though muscle hardened her jaw. “If he can read, he can work. If not, he can make cocoa and get the fuck out of my way.”

Regina exhaled into a raw, half-formed smile - relief, gratitude. Her shadowed eyes glistened, the vein in her forehead visible as she swallowed too much emotion. “Emma…”

“Just get in your car, Regina.” Emma pushed her in, not unkindly, and closed the driver’s side door after her. She made her way back to the yellow bug in the flare of Regina’s headlights, all business except for an exaggerated sway to her hips. Emma knew Regina watched her, and just because they had work to do, didn’t mean Emma couldn’t have a little fun.

Safe in the confines of her bug, Regina’s Merc pulled away and Emma had a moment to breathe. She rested her head against the steering wheel and closed her eyes - it had been a long night, a long few days and it was nowhere near over.

The rhythm of Storybrooke was always staccato; long bouts of sleepy small town interspersed with brutal, frantic fighting, Emma had accepted that. Liked it, even. This time though, she wasn’t sure she would make it out alive. They would defeat the Snow Queen, she wasn't really worried about that. It was this new element to Regina, this soft skin and taut muscle, body hot and heady, the slow-burn taste of her - _that_ , Emma knew, might just kill her.

But she had waited here long enough.

Emma started her car. She headed to the vault.

*****

**Continued right now. Please comment if you can, and click on!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Emma’s mouth travelled down her ribs, played each bar like the keys of a piano, searched for more music in her, the breathless sounds, where it tickled – Emma thought she could listen to that forever, but the tune changed when her tongue and lips played on stomach muscles and belly, tone intensified as she crept down Regina’s body and settled more weight on her legs."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, this section was split for length. This part is **explicit** and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.  
>  It will lead to a final chapter/epilogue (surprise!), which is the end of this tale.

**Normal [Monsters]**

by

Syrensoul_Red

*****

 

**_11\. [ I pour myself into you ]_ **

There was no trace of Robin Hood, no note to say where he’d gone, just his wife frozen stiffly in a candlelit room of old statuary - the perfect, ghoulish addition. Regina had not given up on thawing Marian out, though her motivations were purer now, but the task would have to wait until Emma’s crisis was over.

They spent the first few hours actively searching -- poured through weathered scrolls and old books, tested potions and each other’s patience. Emma checked every hidden corner of every forgotten room, held up a succession of dusty objects and asked, “What about this?” – until finally, Regina snapped.

“Would you please stop touching _everything_ you come across before one of us gets killed?” Regina crossed her arms over her chest. “Preferably you.”

A hinted pout; Emma returned the hefty bronze – _goblin, was it? Yoda_? – to its place on the floor behind a heavy cabinet. “Regina…”

Regina sighed, sank onto a stepped section of the stone floor and folded her useless hands in her lap. “We have to face it, Emma – there is nothing in here that can stop this witch’s curse.”

“Spell.”

“ _Curse,_ ” Regina snapped.

“Whatever.” Emma sank down next to her. Their shoulders touched, Emma’s knees tucked up, forearms draped over them and she stared at the ribbon on her wrist, wriggled her outstretched fingers. “I guess I could always cut off my hand...”

“I think that’s a bit melodramatic.”

Emma shrugged, half-joked: “I’d look hot with a hook.”

“With _a_ hook, or with _the_ Hook?” Regina regretted it the moment it was out of her mouth. She never had learned to keep jealousy to herself, a problem that became significantly worse when it had anything to do with Emma.

Emma turned to her, face drawn. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

Every fibre of Regina screamed _No,_ body tensed in silence.

“I mean, we probably _should_ talk about it,” Emma went on, eyes on the ground. “If there’s even an it to talk about. Obviously there’s-- I mean there’s something here, right?” She glanced at Regina. “What is this?” Looked away again. “God I hate these conversations.”

Regina asked dryly, “Had a lot of them in your time?”

“Haven’t you?”

The brunette shrugged. “Not really. It was always more--” She waved her hand regally at the space before them, “-- _I’ll take that one_.”

“That’s… dark.”

Regina’s eyes narrowed, hardened. “Well I wasn’t the Queen of Puppies.”

Emma shrugged a concession - it was hardly her place to judge, she had a library of stories she’d rather no one rifled through.

“My point is--” Regina dragged them back on track, “that I would rather you kept your hand.”

“Oh yeah? You got plans for it?” Emma’s mouth quirked, a sparkled glint in deep-sea eyes.

Regina huffed, lips pursed, brow arched -- but gently she reached out and simply laced their fingers together. She pulled Emma’s hand back into her lap, rested her other hand on top of it, stroked Emma’s wrist with her thumb silently, absently, dark eyes fixed to the far wall.

Emma stared at the side of Regina’s face for a long time; the whorl of her ear, the hammered pulse in her neck that belied her apparent calm. Emma felt it too, a painful thud in her sternum as though this was a moment more terrifying than any other. It was. She clutched Regina tighter, an anchor to being swept away.

“The last—” Emma cleared her fractured throat and tried again. “The last time I saw you, you were pretty pissed at me. Pretty determined Robin Hood was your Happy Ending.”

“Yes I was.” Regina half-shrugged, backlit a smile. “You never should trust Pixie Dust.” She looked down at their hands, comfortable in her lap. “Robin Hood was…” _A mistake? Married? Incapable of making me feel even a shadow of what you do?_ “… Not for me.”

Tension that Emma didn’t know she’d had, slipped away. She exhaled into easy silence, the occasional flicker and hiss of candlelight.

Regina couldn’t help herself, asked coolly, “What about Captain Making-Eyes?”

“I don't make eyes.” Emma ghosted a self-deprecating smile. “Not the doey kind, anyway.”

“So you said...”

Emma turned to the hardness in Regina’s voice. Her fingertips danced across the satin collar of Regina’s shirt, unbuttoned to the heat of the room. Emma traced the curve of the woman’s neck, followed the line of fabric down to collarbone and chest, her nails trailed over the delicate ridges of bone there and her lips brushed against Regina’s ear. “I make eyes for this...” Emma slid her hand under the satin at the rise of Regina’s breast. At the edge of lace, she asked, “Do we have to keep talking?”

Regina breathed, “ _No...”_ , throat broken, lungs on fire.

“Later then,” Emma said, and pulled their faces together. Emma kissed her with determination, hands lost in black silk; threw her leg across Regina’s lap and straddled her. It was a reversal of their position in that old hall and it never once broke contact between them, Emma's tongue insistent in Regina’s mouth.

Regina’s arms wrapped around Emma’s waist, pulled the lithe woman tighter against herself and Regina searched hungrily for skin under clothes, fingernails in the dips and ridges of Emma’s spine, hands on the clasp of Emma’s bra, fingers dug below her shoulder blades and Emma moaned into Regina’s mouth, a slow thrusting of her hips against Regina’s body, and again, denim on leather.

Against Emma’s teeth, Regina growled, “I can’t do this here.”

Emma agreed, she needed more space, more access to Regina’s body – she glanced around the room. “Where?”

Regina meant her vault. It felt wrong, illicit and tarnished and she didn’t want that. She wrapped an arm tightly around Emma, raised her hand in a flourish -- and then they were somewhere else entirely.

*

Emma fell forward against Regina and her hand grasped warm, dark leather – the back of a couch. Disoriented, she looked around, tried to figure out exactly where Regina had taken her. The furnishings looked familiar, or at least their style -- black, grey and beige with crimson splashes, heavy fabrics and opulence. It was pure Regina and she suspected: “Are we at your mansion?”

Regina nodded, took advantage of the distracted tilt of Emma’s head; trailed the tip of her tongue along her throat, kissed the underside of her jaw. Emma gripped the couch tighter and her hips moved again of their own accord.

“You couldn’t have poofed us straight into bed?”

Regina’s laugh billowed across wet marks and Emma shivered, caught Regina’s face in her hands and tasted her smile fiercely. Hands on her ass, Regina encouraged each thrust of Emma’s body, dug her boot-heels into the rug and moved with her.

Emma fumbled with Regina’s open vest, her shirt; knuckles grazed her nipple and caught Regina’s breath. Somewhere beyond her, Emma asked: “How attached are you to this?” and Regina, distracted, didn’t understand. A second later, Emma grabbed two handfuls of satin and wrenched. There was a tearing sound, the pop of buttons and Regina’s shirt opened in tatters.

Regina stared at the damage, stunned; then at Emma with absolute fury. “ _Emma_!”

“Buttons were too small,” she mumbled without remorse against the curve of Regina’s breast - and when her tongue slid along lace and into cleavage, Regina realised actually she hated this shirt, wanted it as far from her body as possible.

Emma cupped Regina’s breast, tested its weight with her palm and Regina arched into her, used the moment to struggle free of her torn shirt and vest, threw them far from this circle of heat and motion. Emma’s mouth on her neck drew her murmur, she felt the scrape of teeth and the soft skin of Emma’s face – there would be no rash, no marks unless Emma chose to leave them. Regina almost wanted her to, if it weren’t for the questions they’d raise.

Emma slid back onto Regina’s knees, pushed against her shoulders, Regina’s body pitched against the back of the couch for full access to honeyed skin. Her mouth memorised the line of Regina’s collarbone, tasted the hollow of her clavicle, the ridge of her sternum, muscles of her chest when Regina’s fingers slid into her blonde hair and tangled there tightly. Emma kissed black lace, over her taut stomach, down until she reached the band of leather.

Emma slipped away, sank onto the rug and Regina missed her mouth already; reeled when she looked down to see Emma supplicant to her askew limbs. Her bowed head, face hidden in blonde and shadow - the woman slowly unzipped Regina’s boots and lay them to one side. Then she halted.

Emma touched Regina’s bandaged knee gingerly, looked up at her, stricken. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Regina caught Emma’s arms, pulled her back into friction and forgetting, captured her mouth and pushed her against the couch, supine and dishevelled. Regina lay over her, glad her furniture was oversized and expansive; bent her knee between Emma’s thighs and thrust against her, laughed around the delicious taste of “ _Fuck”_ breathed into her mouth.

That’s what Regina intended to do.

But Emma still wore too much. Regina angled herself, rested her hip on the couch but kept up the pressure of her knee; her hand began finally to undo the zipper on the front of Emma’s black shirt. It parted slowly, and Regina took time to enjoy every revealed inch of skin, surprisingly sun-kissed for now in Maine against the stark white of her bra, simple and understated and perfectly Emma.

“Are you gonna take all night?”

“Yes,” Regina muttered archly, throaty and warm and didn’t see Emma’s smirk, fixated as she was on the diagonal rent in clothing and time. Regina slipped back over her, kissed her mouth, the dimple in her chin, her throat; hands under Emma's back released the clasp of her bra deftly.

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Done this before?"

"I don't think I should answer that," Regina remarked, then pushed aside the material and captured Emma's breast in her mouth and Emma didn't care anymore, fingers twisted in onyx hair.

Regina lathed her tongue over Emma’s nipple, teeth grazed pink areola and it pulled a groan from Emma’s open mouth. When her tongue flickered on the hardened nub, Emma arced like she’d been shot and Regina’s smile curved wickedly in her task.

Emma struggled against useless sleeves and straps and Regina helped free her arms, admired for a second how astonishingly beautiful she was, flushed and naked from the waist up. Her hand found Emma’s breast again, fingers rubbed and squeezed, pinched her nipple, rolled it between finger and thumb. It elicited her name, “ _Regina…_ ” gravelled and breathy and she drank it from Emma’s lips.

Regina kissed her deeply, thoroughly; used her free hand to brace herself against the couch and rocked her body forward, thigh pressed into the heat, the ache of Emma and Emma’s hips rose to meet it. Emma’s hands were everywhere, Regina’s back, her hair; nails down her spine, fingers worked their way under her leather skirt and dug into muscle. Black lace slid down Regina’s arms and Regina hadn’t felt Emma flick the clasp – clearly she was not the only one with a certain set of skills. Then she heard the whine of a zipper and leather started to gather with each thrust, loose against her hips.

Regina laughed then, into Emma’s mouth and the woman’s lips curved in response - Emma looked so fucking pleased with herself. There was no fragile ego here, nothing to be wounded by Regina’s expulsion of enjoyment, just shared. Regina nearly said something that would have destroyed her, destroyed this, destroyed them with its premature, impromptu honesty but she managed to trap it in her pharynx before damage was done.

_One day I could love you, Emma Swan…_

Instead Regina reached for Emma’s jeans, spent far too long arguing with her belt buckle and the tight leather cinch-then-release of it made Emma grunt in a ‘ _hurts, but not bad’_ way. Regina filed that away for another time; wrestled with the brass button, pulled the zip and then Emma was on top of her and she didn’t know how it happened.

Emma flung away the scrap of black lace, mouth and hands crushed to Regina’s breasts, the salt-spice taste of her, hardness and soft. She sucked forcefully on Regina’s nipple, and when it dragged a moan from her Emma did it again, scraped with her teeth and flickered her tongue, a hard pinch with her fingers and Regina writhed beneath her, put her hand over Emma’s and squeezed it harder against her.

Emma’s mouth travelled down her ribs, played each bar like the keys of a piano, searched for more music in her, the breathless sounds, where it tickled – Emma thought she could listen to that forever, but the tune changed when her tongue and lips played on stomach muscles and belly, tone intensified as she crept down Regina’s body and settled more weight on her legs.

When Emma kissed along the edge of her tights, Regina’s voice hit its lowest register, a deep-seated need in her mouth when she said “ _Emma…”_ , coarse and shaking, and Emma shook her head, wondered how she had ever convinced herself this wasn’t what she wanted, this woman splayed out beneath her.

Regina thought there was no sexy way to remove tights. She had not planned for this eventuality when she’d dressed the previous evening. She hadn’t planned for this to happen ever, outside of her own vivid imagination and darkened bedroom on long, lonely nights. But in the press and pull of her body, Emma found a way.

Emma traced her tongue along the curled bracket of Regina’s obliques to her navel, the raised point of her hipbone and latched on, mouth sure to leave a mark and her fingers slid into the tight fabric. She rolled it over Regina’s thighs, put her hands to Regina’s knees and caressed down her calves until the fabric was gone.

Emma found herself distracted again by Regina’s now-uncovered knee, welted and bruised, the damage she had done. Emma took a deep breath, cracked her knuckles and Regina rose up on her elbows to find out what was going on, her sudden absence. Emma’s palms crackled to life - she laid them on Regina’s bone and skin, felt a rush of heat and Regina hissed through clenched teeth… and then it was done. Perfectly healed.

Emma knelt back, pleased with herself; looked up to see Regina slack-jawed and frozen. “What?”

Regina shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I… Very good, Miss Swan.”

Emma rolled her eyes, tugged Regina’s hips towards her so the woman lost purchase on the couch. “Stop calling me that,” she growled, though it was playful and Regina actually laughed with a kind of delight Emma had never expected to hear from her, and Emma buried her own smile in the scrap of lace at Regina’s hipbones, so close to the place they both wanted her to be.

Regina’s fingers slid against Emma’s scalp, gold tangled between them, twisted strands into a loose knot so she could still see Emma’s face, wanted to see every part of her, body propped up on her elbows. Emma was lost in this final poor excuse for panties, a matching black wisp of lace, the last barrier to her undoing of Regina. She trailed the fingernails of both hands up from Regina’s knees over the sensitive skin of her thighs and the brunette shivered, until Emma’s fingertips slid under the thin band that kept her underwear in place and she pulled it slowly away.

Regina, stripped bare before her - unabashed and unbridled, unbearably sexy.

Emma wanted to dive right in but Regina caught her face and pulled her up for her mouth, kissed her unrelentingly, arms wrapped tightly around her crushed them together. Regina’s breasts against hers, the feel of her skin; Emma rocked her hips and felt wetness even through the denim on her thigh and she swore into Regina’s mouth, sweetly.

Regina breathed, “You’re still wearing pants.”

“And I have my boots on,” Emma added, cocky – the competitive streak between them alive and well as Regina tried to wrestle her over, get the upper hand while Emma leant in with more of her weight until it was futile. Emma’s lips curved, triumphant; a flash of victory and she thrust her hips again - Regina’s strength faltered. “Just take it, Regina.”

Burnt sienna and bronze flashed with a hint of violet, Regina’s face darkened but Emma felt no fear. She moved against Regina, fingers on the back of her neck and her thumb stroked Regina’s tensed jaw. Emma tongued Regina’s lower lip, the corner of her mouth; trailed over her hot flushed cheek and suckled her earlobe, the curved shell of her ear and she felt Regina’s tension ebb away, the surrender of her.

At that, something warm and sharp constricted Emma’s chest, prickled across her skin like electricity and she kissed Regina again, slowly and delicately. Emma knew she had not won here. This woman owned a piece of her. Maybe all of her pieces.

Emma slowly re-traced her steps down Regina's body, the rise and fall of her, hot skin and promises until she settled herself between Regina’s thighs. She breathed deeply, spice and tang; put her hand on Regina’s belly with fingers splayed and Regina put hers over it, and then Emma lowered her mouth to heat and wetness and Regina’s sharply gasped “ _Yes….”_

 _Finally..._ Emma’s tongue in the purest taste of her, so slick and wet - she tried to catch everything, rolled Regina in her mouth, made patterns across silk and the hard bundle of nerves, tested which parts made Regina’s thighs shake. She found them, the flat of her tongue on Regina’s clit, the section that made her groan “ _There..”_ and wrap her leg around Emma’s waist, open and needy, thrusting against her mouth.

Emma put an arm around Regina’s hips to hold her steady, licked and tongued her, muscle firm against Regina until her jaw ached, and above her sounds rose in volume, the unintelligible encouragement and begging of a woman who usually did neither.

Emma hummed and the woman jolted; she did it again and took her hand from Regina’s belly, down beneath her chin until her fingers were against the wettest part of her. Emma circled the opening carefully, questioned – and Regina’s hips rose to meet her, urged her in.

One finger and Regina moaned “ _More_ …”; two and the woman threaded her hands almost painfully in Emma’s hair, Emma’s tongue struggled to do more than stay put as Regina writhed against her. She pushed, the muscle of her forearm tight and Emma curled her fingers against the ridges she found there and Regina’s voice became a broken string of curses as Emma thrust into her again and again.

She felt Regina clench, the muscles under her hand taut, the tension and upward bend of Regina like she was pulled on a string and Emma pushed deeper, faster, the firm stroke of her tongue as Regina came -a crashing tide of sound and hips and pulled hair. Emma kept going, would not stop until Regina made her, weakly; a brushed cheek and raised hip all she could manage. Emma kissed Regina’s thigh, her belly, distracted her as she gently removed her fingers and missed the wet heat of her already.

At Regina’s urging, Emma made her way back up her body, and when she reached her mouth Regina was alive again. She took every damp piece of herself from Emma’s lips, arms wrapped around her like she was the only steady ground as shudders coursed through her. Emma couldn’t help a smug smile but hid it in a sweetness of kisses along Regina’s flushed cheek and wordless jaw.

Regina was unkempt and beautiful.

Emma stretched out beside her against the arm of the couch, back propped on a wealth of overstuffed pillows. When Regina curled into her, put her head on her chest Emma thought she might flay open, burst apart with something she would not name. She put it down instead to the warm buzz of arousal. It was safer there.

They breathed together, quietly. Emma’s nose itched. She couldn’t bring herself to move to scratch it.

“Your clothes, Emma.”

Emma raised an eyebrow over Regina’s tussled hair, looked down their bodies and remembered her jeans. She crossed her booted feet at the ankles; they scraped on the leather couch and Regina’s hand tensed on her ribs. Emma wriggled away. “Hey, it’s not my fault. I said you should’ve poofed us straight into bed.”

“I wouldn’t want your boots on my bed either,” Regina said archly.

Emma’s eyebrow shot higher, and the hand wrapped around Regina’s waist travelled across her bare hip, over the curve of her ass and down, until fingers curved into wetness. “I don’t think you would’ve cared a minute ago...”

Regina’s open mouth groaned against Emma’s breast; found her nipple and bit a little harder on it than necessary. Emma hissed and Regina smirked, but soothed the bite with a swirled tongue.

“Well I mind now,” Regina said. She clambered suddenly over Emma’s lanky body, grabbed Emma’s hand and tugged her seated on the edge of the couch, dropped to her knees in front of her.

Regina had intended simply to remove Emma’s boots, but when she looked up, Emma’s eyes were hooded, her chest fell erratically, fists clenched at her sides and it pulled the bow of Regina’s mouth deliciously skyward.

She put her hands on Emma’s knees and pushed them wide.

Fingertips slid slowly up Emma’s denim thighs. Regina reached Emma’s hips and she rested her palms there, thumbs pressed to the sensitive skin beside the jut of bone. Regina moved into the space between Emma’s legs, lowered her head and trailed the tip of her tongue across the open V of Emma’s unzippered jeans.

The blonde whispered _“Shit…_ ”, and while she would never admit it to Emma, Regina had started to enjoy her dirty mouth.

Regina’s tongue lathed tensed abdominal muscles, wetly traced each rigid line and dip while her fingers did what they’d originally intended – pulled each boot zipper with a low hiss, a counterpoint to the breathy sounds that came from Emma. When Emma was barefooted, Regina’s hands were freed to touch hot skin and she rose on her knees, cupped Emma’s breasts, thumbs rubbed over puckered nipples and Emma’s hands tangled in her hair, tugged her angled neck until she captured Regina’s mouth. Regina rolled her thumbs and Emma arched into her, moaned onto her tongue.

One of Regina’s hands purposefully wandered, nails scraped gently over sensitive ribs and Emma jolted, murmured “ _Tickles…”_ , so Regina did it again. Emma was clearly unimpressed, and Regina chuckled against her thinned lips, traced them with her tongue, made it up to her with kisses until the blonde finally relented, and Regina’s hand moved lower, across Emma’s stomach to rest against her open jeans. Regina’s fingers teased the edge of what felt like cotton panties – _of course_ – and when Emma’s hips rose, Regina pushed her hand inside, into heat and unbelievable wetness.

Emma hissed “ _Fuck…”_ and Regina’s head fell forward onto Emma’s shoulder, a low groan as she bit her own lip hard enough that it brought tears to her eyes. They stayed with the exquisite sensation, the slick slide of Emma, hot and smooth and hard, perfect.

Regina was high on her knees, shoulder locked awkwardly, wrist bent and she didn’t care, worked her fingers over Emma’s clit gently at first, then with pressure and insistence. The blonde jerked, nails dug painfully into Regina’s bent neck, thrust against her and Regina realised if she kept going, her arm would break. She pulled back and Emma whimpered, a sound both desolate and needy and Regina shushed her, took her hand as she rose and pulled Emma up.

“Come with me.”

On shaking legs, Emma followed.

*

The sitting room was attached to Regina’s bedroom. Emma hadn’t known that could happen, but then she had spent so much of her life in converted trailers and cheap hotel rooms, it wasn’t saying much. She let herself be led by the hand across a wide expanse of carpet, more space in those two rooms than the entire New York apartment she’d shared with Henry. The view was spectacular: Regina’s naked body, determined sway to her hips and ass – Emma would have followed her for miles.

She was almost surprised by the bed, not just because she had been distracted, but because it was… simple. Emma didn’t know why but a part of her had expected an elaborate four-post affair, all heavy wood and canopied opulence. This was just a bed. Large and luxurious, yes, with sheets that probably cost more than her car – but otherwise, just a bed.

A bed belonging to Regina Mills. A place Emma had never expected to be. Imagined, but never quite thought would actually happen.

“Stop.”

Emma did, without thought; thighs at the edge of the mattress. Regina had slipped around behind her and she moved in now, pressed herself against Emma’s back, breasts under her shoulder blades. Regina wrapped an arm around Emma’s waist and pulled her ass firmly against her hips, and with her free hand she moved aside the tangled mane of Emma’s hair; lowered her mouth to the curve of her neck, tasted salt and cinnamon, tested it with her teeth.

Emma’s breath caught and she leant back into her, gave Regina easy access to her breasts, both cupped immediately by Regina’s hands. Regina squeezed her flesh, ran her hands down Emma’s long body, over ribs and tapered waist and her mouth followed behind, marked each vertebrae of Emma’s spine. Muscle danced when she blew across the wet trails; nails scraped oversensitive skin as she pushed her fingers into Emma’s denim waistband.

Her jeans were always tight, a fact Regina appreciated but it took some force to push the material over her hips and down her thighs. Regina went with them, sank slowly to her knees; kissed the perfect curve of Emma’s ass, dug her teeth in the muscle. Emma jumped, tilted towards the bed but Regina held her hips steady, bit and sucked until she had left a dark mark on paler skin and chuckled quietly, wickedly.

“Regina…” Emma’s consternation was tempered by desire.

Regina squeezed her hips, kissed the possessive bruise, traced her fingertips delicately over Emma’s thighs and watched as the skin puckered into gooseflesh. She helped Emma step free of jeans and underwear then sat back on her heels, looked up at the statuesque woman before her, all finely sculpted muscle and tanned limbs and it left her momentarily breathless.

“ _Exquisite…_ ” Regina murmured. She put her hand on Emma’s inner thigh as she rose, rested her knuckles just a fraction from the wet burn of her and pressed her lips against the place where shoulder became neck. When Emma tried to turn, Regina stopped her.

“ _Regina…”_

This time her name was a breathless question, a need and Regina smiled against the tight muscle of Emma’s shoulder. She bent her knee between Emma’s thighs, nudged them slightly wider and asked the woman lowly: “Do you trust me?”

Emma’s breath hitched. She said nothing for a long time. It was against all reason to trust Regina, against her very nature – Emma had been burned so many times her flesh was raw and new; she rose a phoenix, more wary with each year.

But she did. She trusted her.  Emma couldn’t stop herself. “Yes...”

Rich chocolate eyes drowned in saltwater; Regina bit her lip against a flood of words, felt the vein in her forehead swell against the pressure of holding it back. Instead she occupied her mouth with Emma’s shoulder, her back, a firm press of lips as she nudged Emma’s legs wider.

Regina stroked her palm across the sensitive skin on Emma’s inner thigh and the edge of her hand slid into wetness - Emma was all but dripping. Regina groaned into Emma’s spine, other hand clutched her hip, held and reassured while she cupped the begging heat of her.

Emma inhaled raggedly, moaned when Regina’s palm moved, this time fingers slid through liquid heat on either side of her clit and held it, then again, back and forth the along the length of her. When Regina increased pressure and her fingers squeezed the bundle of nerves, Emma’s body trembled. Her “ _Fuck…”_ was a creaked groan and she fell forward, hands on the bed, bent at the hips where Regina still held her tightly against her thighs.

Emma felt exposed, vulnerable but when Regina’s fingers moved finally onto her clit she didn’t care anymore; let her head hang, gold curls splayed over crimson and grey fabric. Regina circled slowly with the pads of her fingers, and again; fractionally faster, harder until Emma’s swearing became less intelligible, rasped from her throat.

Regina brought Emma closer to the edge, felt her thighs shake, wrapped her arm around her bent waist to hold Emma steady. Fingers tight and fast against the hard nub of flesh, her palm full of liquid and Regina wanted more of it, licked and bit at Emma’s back, pressed her hand against the place that made the woman jerk and moan and lean heavily as her legs gave way.

Muscles tensed and shivered, Emma’s angled torso clenched and then Emma’s thrusts against her fingers became wild and untempoed and she came in a choked cry, Regina’s strangled name. Emma collapsed on the duvet, arms no longer able to hold her as she heaved and shook. The fabric was soft and cool on her flushed cheek and she just wanted to lay there - her limbs numbed, heart thundered in her chest.

But Regina could not stop, wanted, needed more, more of this exquisite woman, her magnificent body. She pulled her elbow back, circled Emma’s opening with her wet hand, moaned against Emma’s skin at the heat she found there. Regina thrust in with two fingers, heard Emma’s muffled curse into the comforter, watched her fists twist the fabric but her body pushed against Regina, hips tilted and back arched and coaxed her further in.

Regina’s fingers held tightly by Emma’s inner walls and Regina purred over her back, the nails of her free hand scraped gently on Emma’s shivered skin, rested against her crooked neck. Regina massaged the edge of curls, Emma’s tight shoulder as she pulled her fingers out to the tips and then pushed back in; and again; and again.

Emma moaned jaggedly, whispered “ _More…”_ and Regina thought she might die for the cyclone in her chest, her tattered lungs, ribcage rented and warped. She put a third finger against the wet fire of Emma’s body and slowly, carefully pushed in.

Muscle danced in Emma’s back, light flickered across the sheen of sweat there and Regina tasted it, tidal-torn desire. She thrust into her, over and over, faster when she knew Emma could take it, when the blonde begged her not to stop, never to stop; Regina promised with every atom in her body, fucked her like the world could end but this wouldn’t, not ever, not while she had strength left to give.

When Emma started to buckle and bend, frenzied hips taut and twisted, Regina knew she was right at the cliff’s-edge and reached again for slick-hard nerves, touched Emma in time with hard thrusts until she found the point where Emma screamed and lost cohesion, and tumbled against the bed. Regina slumped over her, damp skin on the length of Emma’s body, spent; her fingers still trapped as Emma clenched in waves. 

Regina wanted to build a home here, in this unbridled fury of sweat and shuddered breath and collapsed limbs. It felt so perfectly aligned. She never wanted to leave.

Lips pressed to the thundered pulse point of Emma’s jugular, Regina buried her face in her hair. Emma’s hand flurried; Regina caught it with her free fingers and the blonde crushed them almost painfully in hers, pulled Regina’s arm tightly around her.

In that perfect moment of stillness, Regina closed her eyes. Emma’s hair tickled her nose. The cello-case fit of their hips lulled Regina’s languid body and she felt sanguine and flushed against the throb of Emma’s skin.

They were not comfortable in this position on the bed. They were not necessarily comfortable in this new position in life. But Regina felt comfortable enough to twist her curled ankles into Emma’s, wrap her body firmly over the woman’s back, hold her as she was determinably held. Regina felt safe here.

If only for a moment, she felt warm.

*****

**If you have time to leave comments I'd really appreciate it. It keeps me going. And on to the epilogue :)**

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Emma used three fingers on the length of her, slow and lazy; drew moisture up, painted her name over Regina’s skin. It was teasing, unhurried, as though the wolf wasn’t always just outside their door, like no curse would come despite being just a few scant hours away."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it. A last little bit of dirty, a last little bit of sweet. Thank you all for joining me and being so lovely about everything :)

  **Normal [Monsters]**

by

Syrensoul_Red

*****

 

_**12\. [ There are no monsters here ]** _

Regina floated in that half-dream place between asleep and awake, until something tugged her like a kite string – Emma; her soft voice, the whispered sound of her name, “ _Regina…”_

It caressed her sleepy mouth into a smile.

_“Regina…”_

She nuzzled deeper into Emma’s hair.

“REGINA!”

Regina jerked to full consciousness, bubble of contentment shattered and she snapped, “ _What_? _”_

“Your hand…”

Her fingers were still curled inside Emma, tightly sheathed and Regina chuckled lowly, a spark of wonder, of rueful disbelief. She had never imagined waking this way.

 _I could make it a habit.._.

Slowly, carefully, Regina pulled back; Emma’s hissed breath bellowed the fire in her belly and it was all she could do not to push in again, along that knife edge of “ _Please_ ” and “ _Stop_ ” - but Regina freed her.

Emma crawled up the comforter, collapsed on her belly, forearms trapped beneath her and her face pressed into the bed, hidden. Regina curled in beside her, planted an impetuous kiss on Emma’s shoulder before she stretched out and closed her eyes again.

“Should we talk about this?” Emma’s voice was muffled by pillows.

Regina folded her hands on her stomach. “What’s there to talk about?” She felt Emma’s lifted head, her stare and raised eyebrow but Regina refused to open her eyes.

“Are you serious?”

Regina didn’t respond.

Emma propped her chin on her elbow, angled towards her. “We just had… _amazing_ sex—” Regina’s lip curved smugly and Emma almost regretted saying it, “--It’s gonna change something. There’s a curse coming, my parents– Henry…”

Regina’s brow furrowed, she… _pouted_ and Emma thought she might die. Something goofy took hold of her mouth and Emma couldn’t understand what was going on, she wasn’t this person, this was the time when she usually yanked on her clothes and scurried away, maybe sent a text the next day if she knew a name or the wine had been good. Emma didn’t initiate conversations. She didn’t believe in plans for the future. She hated the very idea of a ‘Happy Ending’ scenario.

_But here I am..._

“We should talk about this,” Emma repeated.

Regina sighed, opened her eyes to the ceiling. “I suppose we should.”

Now that Emma had gotten her way, she didn’t want it anymore. She pressed her cheek back on the pillows, trailed an absent finger between Regina’s breasts, down the line of her stomach, traced patterns there.

“That doesn’t make me want to talk, Emma,” Regina breathed.

Emma smiled into her crooked elbow, said impishly, “Maybe we don’t have to.”

Regina turned and rolled eyes at her. “No, you started this. Let’s talk.”

Emma’s face scrunched - she had no idea what to say. She wondered where her pants had gone, how difficult it would be to learn to poof outta here in the next thirty seconds.

“This will happen again.” Regina said it plainly, in a voice that brooked no argument. She made no requests or demands, simply took the truth and laid it clearly, delicately on the table.

Emma shifted uncomfortably. Regina was right. Whatever this was, whatever it might become it would be repeated. It had been a long time coming. They could deny it, ignore it, push it down into each other’s chests but eventually, limbs would find limbs; the impossibility of silence would force their mouths together, a mad search for whispered promises on each other’s tied tongues.

Emma’s fingers tightened on Regina’s skin, the comforting solidarity of her. “What do you wanna do about it?”

“Nothing.” Regina placed her hand on Emma’s tensed wrist, curled their fingers together. She rested her cheek on Emma’s hair and breathed her deeply. “We will keep going as we always have -- You will be the hero Savior, I’ll be the _somewhat_ reformed villain and we’ll work together to stop the Snow Witch. We will save the town, a party will be thrown by the ever-grateful villagers – and I won’t be invited.” Regina sneered but wasn’t without humour. She shifted onto her side, faced Emma’s confusion.

“But later - when everything is quiet, and Henry is back in his routine of Friday night dinners and weeks on with me, weeks off with you - life will become oppressively _normal_. And you, Emma Swan, will find yourself at my door, late at night. _Restless_.”

Emma swallowed, knew every sentence was true but immediately denied it. “That won’t happen.”

“Of course it will,” Regina said archly. She ran her hand over Emma’s hip, fingers dug possessively into the curve of her ass and she leant in, lips brushed against the shell of Emma’s ear. “Because if it doesn’t,” she whispered darkly, “then I will come to you.”

Emma shivered, mouth opened, eyes slid shut.

“And that would be uncomfortable,” Regina continued, stroked Emma lower, the shivered edge of liquid heat. “Because  despite being a fully grown adult woman, you still live with your parents.”

It took a second for Emma to register, focused as she was on the movement of Regina’s fingers – but when she did, Emma bit fiercely at Regina’s shoulder. Wicked laughter rumbled from Regina’s mouth and Emma teethed her again, softer this time. “Evil bitch.”

“So they say,” Regina agreed, wry amusement in her low voice.

Emma caught Regina’s burbled mouth, kissed the mirth from it furiously. She felt an overwhelming sense of happiness and something so like hope that it had no place in her - Emma buried it on Regina’s tongue, easy and sweet; then insistent, demanding. Her hand moved from Regina’s stomach to her hips; lower, sank into revived wetness and Regina shuddered, gasped into her mouth, over her tongue.

Emma slid three fingers along the wet length of Regina, slow and lazy; drew moisture up, painted her name on Regina’s skin. She teased, unhurried, as though the wolf wasn’t always just outside their door, like no curse would come despite being just a few scant hours away. Emma’s world narrowed to Regina’s breathy sounds, the lightness which seemed so out of place in Regina’s usually booming, determined mouth, as though the curve of her throat when Emma touched her _here_ , or _there_ took the weight from Regina’s vocal cords, stripped the darkest years away.

Emma kissed the cartilage of the woman’s throat and it buzzed her lips, a low rumble as her fingers drew small circles on Regina’s still-sensitive nerves. Regina’s hands knitted in her hair; Emma kissed the veins in the hollow of her collarbone, her chest - the rising flush, the beat and pound of Regina’s heart when Emma pressed more firmly against her clit.

The tip of Emma’s tongue followed the rise of Regina’s breast and when she reached the darkened areola, a puckered nipple she captured it in her mouth, drove her fingers into Regina. Regina bent and arced, head thrown back with an almost purred moan. Emma angled herself for full use of her shoulder, swirled Regina’s nipple with her tongue and thrust into her again, hard to the hilt of her hand, then a slow-pull release all the way to her fingertips, in again.

Emma learnt that first slow push into Regina’s body caught her breath, and a hard, sharp thrust to her knuckles released it from Regina’s mouth in a ragged gasp. When Emma pushed deeper, faster, Regina’s sounds and breaths merged into grunts and curses. She curved her fingers and found a higher-pitched, unintelligible pleading.

Emma swiped her thumb over Regina’s clit as she worked the noise and oxygen from her, felt Regina’s compact body rise in the vacuum, Emma’s triceps burnt but she would do this forever, would never stop touching this woman. When Emma felt her thumb pushed aside, she had just enough presence of mind not to stop moving her arm though every other part of her shuddered to a halt. Emma lifted her head from Regina’s breast, took a second to appreciate Regina’s darkly beautiful face and the open, jutted line of her jaw, then looked down her body.

Regina’s own hand was between her thighs, fingers hard on her clit and Emma thought she might come apart just from watching, fought to support herself on her splayed, trembled hand. Emma’s rhythm faltered and Regina keened, choked, “ _Don’t stop_ ”, and _“Please…”_ and Emma found it again, her place inside with a sudden, renewed energy. Emma pushed and curled her fingers, leant in with her hips to go deeper, found herself riding Regina’s now raised, quivering thigh.

Emma groaned _“Fuck”_ against Regina’s stomach, head bent and hair tangled as she rode her, wild and slick and Emma knew she wouldn’t need long as Regina clenched tighter on her fingers, made moving her arm difficult. Just Emma’s hand now, fingers hard against ridges, the crushing pull inside her; Regina’s hand moved like balled lightning over her clit.

Regina’s final moan began as rumbled thunder, grew into a high-pitched wave of sound and when she came, it roared and crashed over Emma’s taut body. She pressed harder into Regina’s thigh, rode roughly until Emma cracked and broke open with a wrenched moan, fell forward onto Regina’s shivered skin; slumped against her, shattered.

It all became silence but for their breathing, heavy and gasped. Regina put a tired hand on Emma’s shoulder and Emma pressed her cheek and ear to the pounding kick of Regina’s chest as it returned slowly to normal, her nose on the underside of Regina’s breast with no intention but to lie there and exist. Her thumb idly stroked Regina’s side.

Their sweat dried slowly.

“This will happen again.”

Regina’s voice when she said it was different this time, her tone complex. There was something else there, something _more._

Emma said nothing. She kissed the skin beneath her lips.

She held on a little tighter.

*

As dawn approached they each showered and dressed, fresh clothes and rested skin like tight new armour. Regina poofed them back to her vault, just in case. The phone call came as the world turned electric blue, the eerie haze of sunrise through thick fog -- they would meet everyone at the clock tower. Together they would find out exactly what kind of terror Storybrooke faced.

Emma was tensed, withdrawn, her mind on the job ahead. Regina was now secretly terrified of what the curse meant. If it did as Belle said and turned them against each other, then this might be the last quiet moment with Emma she had.

Regina touched Emma’s arm idly and Emma clenched against it, pulled away. It narrowed Regina’s eyes, and she snapped darkly: “ _Hey_.”

“What?”

An arched eyebrow, arms folded over her suited chest - Regina was in heels again, had the height advantage and she used it now, stared pointedly down at Emma. “What do you mean, ‘ _what_ ’?”

Bleakly, Emma said, distracted: “This thing is coming, Regina – I can feel it.” The ribbon on her wrist had started to glow again, it burnt, and Emma felt the pull of magic and something else – two points like magnets tugged at her skin. “I don’t like it. This bitch has gotta be stopped.”

Regina covered the ribbon with her fingers, drew Emma’s eyes up. “So we’ll stop her. Together.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

Regina’s face shuttered. She turned away, sniped, “Well I think you’re an idiot.”

Emma stared after her, confused, annoyed – then realised what she’d said, how dismissive it was. _Way to go Swan, great fucking work._ Emma puffed air, reached For Regina’s arm. “Sorry, I just meant… I think Elsa and I -- I can feel her. I think—”

“She has to be the one with you.” Regina’s voice was tight. She didn’t like it. But then, she didn’t have to. Magic mostly did as it pleased.

It shouldn’t have mattered anyway. Regina told herself it didn’t, that whatever had happened between them today, yesterday, had changed nothing. Emma was no more beholden to her than she was to Emma; Regina no more concerned about Emma’s wellbeing or feelings than she had ever been.

But it was a lie.

Regina watched as Emma fidgeted uncomfortably, watched as the blonde sank into something beyond this vault, something darker. Emma carried the weight of this town on her shoulders so heavily that it stooped her. She was a hero, the Savior – not by choice, responsible for everything and everybody, including her own parents.

_Not for me..._

Regina knew that Emma was uncomfortable sharing responsibility, yet had always accepted that the fate of Storybrooke was equally in Regina’s hands. They had not always fought on the same side or with the same goals, and more often than not this distribution came in the form of blame – but things were different now.

Regina could take a little of that burden. More directly than she had before.

Regina crossed the space between them and cupped Emma’s face, stroked her clenched jaw with her thumb. Emma was stubborn about it, thin-lipped and tensed and Regina tugged her off-balance, kissed Emma hungrily, fingers wound in her long hair. She coaxed the rigidity from Emma’s body with her lips until the blonde melted into her, into warmth and strength and an unexpected comfort. When Emma’s hands slipped beneath Regina’s blazer to her waist and simply held her, Regina pulled back, rested her forehead against Emma’s.

A curtain of blonde shielded them from the outside world, a quiet room, private, theirs. Into this small space, Emma whispered, “What if I can’t stop her?”

“Then I will hurt someone.” The confession ripped Regina’s throat, tore it deep and bloodied, stricken. “But I won’t let that happen.”

Emma couldn’t see for saltwater. “Henry—”

“I will take him—”

“No, I should take him. He’ll be safer—”

“That Ice Bitch wants you. Henry will be safer with me. I will lock him away where no one can ever touch him--” A hitched breath, tear-burnt eyes. “—Not even me.”

Emma kissed Regina then like the world had ended already and all that was left was this: Her bitter cocoa mouth, black silk hair, temptress’ skin. Emma growled against bruised lips, “I will stop this.”

“Of course you will,” Regina breathed. She added wryly, “A Savior always does.”

When Regina smiled then, Emma suddenly believed it all again. There was magic in Regina’s mouth. This was just another minor hindrance in a long line of fairytale problems - not even the worst, the Snow Queen hardly the most threatening, the bitch didn’t even wear shoes for christsakes.

Emma chuckled onto Regina's curved lips, kissed her lightly and stepped away. She rolled her shoulders, shook her hands, jumped on the spot like a boxer prepared for the ring. “Right, let’s do this.”

Regina watched with chagrin, shook her head, communicated clearly the word _idiot_ with her silence. _But she’s your idiot_ , that little voice whispered. Regina quietly agreed.

“Coming?”

Regina shook herself from her reverie, nodded and followed Emma across the stone floor. “Who knows - maybe Belle or your hero parents can pull something out at the last minute.”

Emma stopped, head tilted, suspicion in her brow. “Regina was that… _hope_ I just heard?”

Regina sneered, revolted. “If it was, I caught it from you.”

“I don’t hope.”

“Well that makes two of us.”

Emma quirked a smile that Regina archly ignored. Then on a more serious note, Emma asked, “If this thing does go down where are you gonna be?”

“Here,” Regina raised her hand in a flourish. “It’s the safest place. If I was to get free – which I doubt – I am far enough from town that you and the cartoon blonde should have plenty of time to resolve this curse before I… wreak havoc.”

Emma frowned. “What about poofing?”

“I—” Regina stopped. For some reason, she hadn’t thought of that. She shrugged, arms wide. “I guess I’ll… tie myself down.”

A rakish smile and Emma stepped in, hands on Regina’s hips. “Maybe I should stay.”

Regina rolled her dark eyes and nudged Emma back, though the thought stuck firmly. _Later…_

It was time to go.

Emma held Regina’s hand and the brunette led her up the stone steps of the vault, out into the freezing pre-dawn air. On leaf litter, a series of stolen kisses threatened to drive them back underground – but this was Storybrooke. There were curses to fight and witches to defeat, peasants to protect and young princes to save. And a myriad other enchanted issues that Emma Swan still found mildly inconceivable.

When she reached her car - and took a very pleasant moment to watch Regina Mills strut back to her own – Emma was centred. She felt capable and somehow more prepared for this fight than any other. Regina coursed through her veins, pounded in her chest, whispered against her ear. Elsa would be the person physically by her side and her friend was great and all – but Regina would fuel Emma.

_Maybe she always has._

Emma shook that thought off because it was crazy, but something remained. Emma didn’t know what it was but it sparked like a new thing. When this was done, Regina would still be there. Not like before.

And maybe it meant nothing but it terrified her, yet Emma was strangely exhilarated; and she didn’t know why, she didn’t know what this thing was or what it meant or what she would do about it – but at least she knew they would win this fight. Hopefully no one would die. Or at least no one Emma liked.

And when it was done, Regina was right -- When everything was quiet, when Henry was back in his routine and life seemed relatively _normal_ again…

Emma would find herself at Regina’s door.

Late at night.

 _Restless_.

*****

**The End. (Except, of course, for the sequel...)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you all for bearing with me when it took longer to post chapters than I promised and for all your kind comments and kudos. I do love feedback, so I really appreciate you taking the time.
> 
> I don't know if I'll do a follow-up to this story, but I'm more than open to taking a shot at it if you'd like - just let me know :) **Addendum: A follow-up is currently under way, called How Hard Can You [Love] Me. You can find it[here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4028881/chapters/13896768)**
> 
> And in case you were wondering about it (or perhaps didn't notice) - there was a structure to the chapter headings, and I'll leave you with it. And thanks again.  
>   
>  **Normal [Monsters]**
> 
> _Once again, I collapse;_   
>  _My body is not my own_   
>  _There has to be more to me than ashes._
> 
> _If I could return, it would be here_   
>  _I found a home in you, once_   
>  _Without you, I ached._
> 
> _This could be my undoing;_   
>  _But we will be tied together_   
>  _Take my shattered bones --_   
>  _These hands; this weary heart_   
>  _I pour myself into you..._
> 
> _There are no monsters here._


End file.
